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PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



OF 



FOKEIGN TRAVEL. 



BY 

EM'LY^ 



y 



"A man may see how this world goes, with no eyes. 

Look with thine'earsf'VKiG>y^''-'/r>\\ 

x>^ t^- T 0^N\ King Lear. 



Xoy. 1880/^ 



PHILADELPHIA: 

E. CLAXTO^ & COMPAJSTY, 

No. 930 Market Street. 
1881. 



■,9^'J^ 
V 



THB UBRART 
I or CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

ANNIE S. WOLF, 

in tlie office of the Librarian of Congress. 



COLLINS, PRINTER. 



IF IT CONTAIN 

A WORTHY SENTIMENT, 

AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT, AN HONORABLE AMBITION, 

IT IS NOT DUE TO VANITY BORN OF FLATTERY, 

BUT TO YOU, 

MY DEAR MOTHER, 

WHOSE PEERLESS NATURE AND ANGEL VIRTUES 

ARE MY SWEETEST MEMORIES ; 

AND I TRUST, IN THOSE DARK DAYS WHICH, 

AS THEY COME TO ALL LIVES, MUST COME TO MINE ALSO, 

MY LOVE OP BOOKS AND DEVOTION TO MY PEN MAY PROVE 

MY SOLACE AND MY STRENGTH. 



" I am in this eartlil7 world; where, to do harm, 
Is often laudable : to do good, sometimes 
Accounted dangerous folly." 



Shakespere. 



PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

OF 

FOREIGN TRAVEL. 



LETTER I. 

"Adieu, adieu ! my native shore 
Fades o'er the waters blue ; 
The night-winds sigh, tlie breakers roar, 

And shrieks the wild seamew. 
Yon Sun that sets upon the sea 

We follow in his flight ; 
Farewell awhile to him and thee, 
My native Land — Good night!" 

Byron. 

Liverpool, February, 1878. 

I ANTEDATE my first page at Liverpool, England, on 
board the steamship ''City of Richmond," which I am offi- 
cially assured will arrive in the Mersey Saturday evening; 
and I sit in my cabin wondering how I shall feel when I 
arrive in a foreign land^ and whether the journal I design 
keeping during my stay abroad will ever be finished, and 
if so whether it will prove pleasant reading to my friends 
at home. For many days I have been confined to my room, 
submitting martyrlike and resignedly to the tortures im- 
posed on me by my turbulent enemy, "Old Nep." For 
many nights I liave lain in my berth (which, by the way, 
was not the most luxurious couch that ever female's tender 
limbs rested upon), listening to the incessant heart-throbs 
of this marvellous iron horse, trampling down the mighty 
waves, and carrying me many thousand leagues from my 
country and my home. As I contemplate new ambitions, 
fresh scenes, and curious studies, the countless possible 
calamities by which I am surrounded are forgotten. The 
seagulls that have been tracking the course of the vessel 

9 



14 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

since noon, resembling giant snowflakes drifted by the 
Tvind, seem to have folded their beautiful wings in rest, 
while the gentle waves rock them to sleep on the bosom of 
the blue sea. These birds live from the offal of the ship, 
but never come aboard, as the}^ are affected by sea-sickness 
the same as human beings. 

"We have had an unusually calm voyage," so my good 
friend the stewardess saj's; the only reply I have to make 
is, "that the sleeplessness of these 'calm' waters has 
created in me sensations of a most unpleasant, not to say, 
hypochondriacal character." 

In these leaves I shall endeavor to avoid the safe and 
easy habit of borrowing ideas from the guide-books, or the 
equally seductive thievery of reflecting the impressions of 
former travellers. I have often thought what delightful 
sketches could have been written by those who crossed from 
New York or Philadelphia to Liverpool in the first ocean 
^steamers. They got the cream of novelty, and their readers 
were almost as much gratified as themselves; but now that 
'*' nearly every one goes to Europe, and that many know far 
more of other countries than of their own, and that it is the 
fashion to say you have been "abroad," a review of rambles 
in foreign climes must be something more than a mere copy 
of what has been written a thousand times. Any one, 
however, who is blessed with the usual fort^'-eight ounces 
of that material instrument of thought, impulse, or percep- 
tion, that reigns supreme in man, and who uses his eyes 
and ears, can find plenty of texts to elaborate wheresoever 
he may journey. The old, old world is forever new to such 
minds, every fresh face is a fresh theme, and nothing is so 
sure to quicken thought as the habits of another people. 
These will be the books that I shall attempt to study dur- 
ing my absence, and if I can succeed in interesting my 
friends beyond the vast sea ever so little, my labors will be 
the labors doubly of love and duty. 

Nine days isolated from the great world ! Nine days 
afloat upon the beautiful but treacherous sea 1 Nine days 
of oblivion 1 

^ 'l^ 5j» JjC 3JC 

No doubt Liverpool is a pleasant city in good weather, 
but when we rode along its broad streets it was dismal and 
wet to a degree; still, withal, it had a pious look, for it was 
Sunday morning, and the people were on their way to 
church. The two great lions in front of St. George's Hall, 
and the equestrian statue of Queen Victoria, with Prince 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 15 

Albert on the opposite pediment, told rae I was in England, 
and the impression was confirmed as we entered the gloomy 
corridor of the London and Northwestern Hotel. Every- 
thing was rich, dark, and heavy. The coffee-room was 
cheerless like the rest; the elaborate decorations, the silent 
servants, the dignified lady clerk in the office, who was at 
once bookkeeper and manager, the massive stairway, were 
all so many natural introductions to a country that I had 
expected to find more remarkable for strengtii and money 
than for grace and beauty. The bad tea, the execrable 
coffee, hard bread, cold toast, and immense muttonchop, 
minus savor, which constituted our breakfast, were tlie ini- 
tials to a long series of the same monotonous fare. 

The almost constant absence of the sun has a depressing 
effect. The atmosphere is not keen and cold as in America, 
but dark and penetrating, and the universal use of bitumin- 
ous coal gives rather a Pittsburg taste and smell to the air. 

There is no Adams Express nor Western Union Transfer 
Company in England, so we hailed a "four-wheeler" to con-' 
vey us, in the inside, and our "traps" on the outside, to the 
hotel. I marvel some enterprising Yankee does not come 
here and establish one of the baggage transfer companies 
for which our country is renowned. He would have no 
competitors to struggle against. Now, here is an oppor- 
tunity for one of our young men; will he take the advice 
of a woman? 

The "hansom" is an unpretentious "one-hoss sha}''," re- 
sembling somewhat our light buggy-wagons. It has only 
two seats, doors that close over the occupants, and it is 
also provided with a glass window that may be lowered 
over the face in inclement weather. The driver is perched 
high in a little box at the back, and the reins pass ovei" the 
top of the carriage. I wonder if this curious equipage is 
an improvement on, or whether it is fashioned after the 
same model of the first public carriage that the inhabitants 
of Liverpool had the privilege of hiring of Mr. James 
Dimoke, in the middle of the eighteenth century. In those 
days Miss Clayton was the happy possessor of the only 
private turnout in this city, so on the occasion of a grand 
part}', ball, or opera, when Miss Clayton was using her 

own brougham, and Mrs. ' had hired the only one at the 

extensive livery stables of James Dimoke, the other ladies 
of Liverpool were conveyed in sedan chairs. 

I was surprised to find so few ladies on the street. The 
women were almost without exception slattern and care- 



16 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

less, and I should have left with a wrong opinion had I 
not had an opportiinit}' to be present at the recej^ion of 
the chief raagistrate of Liverpool, Mr. Forwood, at the 
''City Hall."' Assisted by his accomplished wife, the 
event attracted all the better classes, including the nobility 
of the neighborhood. What must be the wealth of a coun- 
try when the mayor of one of its cities entertains and is 
honored like a monarch ? The City Hall was the first 
English public building I had seen, and the saloons where 
the Lord Mayor of this commercial town, with a popula- 
tion of 500,6^6, received his guests, were infinitely superior 
to the chambers in the White House, at Washington, as 
superior, indeed, as the home of a parvenu cotton-spinner 
is to an old feudal castle. 

Mr. Forwood is a tall, elegant man, about thirty-six, 
evidently the junior of his wife by a couple of years, who 
is the veritable type of an English woman, — a ponderous 
figure clad in the very softest and heaviest of Bonnet silks. 
Her reception toilet of pale sage was bordered with knife- 
plaiting and 7'usses, richly draped with the same material, 
and myrtle-green velvet bands embroidered with cut crys- 
tals of emerald, ruby, and topaz, formed the garniture. 
The costume was completed by an exquisite bonnet of tlie 
same shades. Mrs. Forwood is a comely but not hand- 
some woman. She was exceedingly cordial in lier manner 
of greeting an American, and the pleasant words she spoke 
of my country (for she has visited the United States), 
thrilled me with kindly emotions for my English cousins, 
and greatl}^ tempered the odium with which I had always 
regarded the nation that had held, and hoped to retain us 
their vassals. 

Was it not in this nation, and from this very port of 
Liverpool, that that most infamous and inhuman source of 
emolument, the African slave trade was opened ? As early 
as 1766 Liverpool had already gained an unenviable no- 
toriety in this despicable traffic — the purchase and sale of 
human beings — the liberation of whom cost us years of 
bloodshed, death, and desolation, in the succeeding cen- 
tury. In a bill of lading, dated shortly after we had 
crossed the meridian of the last century, for slaves shipped 
to Georgia, then a portion of South Carolina, I see that 
these poor creatures were branded with particular marks, 
by red-hot irons, the same process used on cattle, and with 
equal indifference. And in the year 1806-1807, when this 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. It 

odious trade was abolished, 185 African slave ships sailed 
from Liverpool carrying 49,213 slaves. 

The docks are unsurpassed by any in the world ; these 
masterful constructions stretch along the Mersey for five 
miles on the Liverpool side, and two miles on the Birken- 
head side, covering with dry-docks two hundred acres, 
together with nineteen miles of quays. 

An attempt at forming something like a dock in the old 
Pool was made in 1561, as a shelter for ships in bad wea- 
ther, by defending the entrance with massive stone piers ; 
and for a century this harbor was sufficient for the limited 
commerce of the period. The development of traffic 
caused the necessity of a regular dock, and in 1*709 an act 
was passed making the first dock at Liverpool for the se- 
curity of all ships trading to and from this port ; it was 
called the Custom House Dock. These were the early 
foundations of the existing enormous system. The pres- 
ent business wealth and importance of Liverpool is chiefly 
owing to its magnificent docks, which are among the great- 
est works of modern times, considering the obstacles sur- 
mounted; unlike most docks they are built in the river 
itself by inclosing within a sea-wall, five miles in extent, a 
portion of the beach of the Mersey, and afterward excava- 
ting the part thus reclaimed to a proper depth. Most of 
these docks communicate with each other, and have sep- 
arate entrances, so the ships may pass from one to the 
other, without being locked out in the river, and back in 
the dock again. 

The sugar refineries and soap factories are very exten- 
sive. What with tlie murky atmosphere, and what with 
the soot arising from the soft coal, I doubt not but the de- 
mand for the latter product exceeds the supply. 

It was cold and inhospitable when we rode through Sef- 
ton Park, but the hedges surrounding the homes of the 
aristocracy within their limits were green, luxuriant, and 
well-combed, and the silver plates, or the letters carved on 
the massive stone portals, told not the names of the owners 
of these mansions, but the name of each estate itself, such 
as ''Maple Grove," "Oak Lodge," "Stanley Park," and 
" Worcester Place." 



2* 



18 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER II. 



"Thus, 
Thus upon London do I lay my sword." 

Jack Cade. 

London, February, 1878. 

London! Great London!! But no. Of that hereafter. 
Eager as I am, dear, silent little friend, 3^011 who never in- 
terrupt nor contradict me, to tell you of this bewildering 
world of a city, 1 must relate to-night only how I came into 
it. Were I to follow my impulses, and pour into you all 
my first impressions, those who ma}^ peruse my pages later 
on would exclaim : "But how was the great capital reached ? 
Em'ly says not a word of her manner of transit from the 
most gigantic commercial port to the political, moral, in- 
tellectual, literar3^, artistic, and social centre of the world. 
Did she ride, walk, fly, or make the passage in a balloon?" 

I came on the "metals," to use the English word for 
rails. We were registered for London this morning at the 
booking-office of the London and Northwestern Station, in 
Lime Street, Liverpool. Of course I felt a woman's curi- 
osity about an English railway station, which I think I 
can attribute to the effect upon my mind of Frith 's great 
picture that hung in the British Art Section at our Centen- 
nial Exhibition. It was admirably descriptive of the 
scene that greeted me this morning. What a motley 
throng! What a torrent of travel! The bright, ruddy- 
faced schoolboy on his way to Rugby, the burly manufac- 
turer returning to his mills in Manchester, the detective 
and the pickpocket, tlie gambler and the priest, tlie lord 
and the farmer, the lady and the maid, the stately dowager 
and the hoydenisli English miss, ungainly and inelegant in 
the extreme, with none of the grace and chic of the fair 
American and brilliant French girl, who followed, all ming- 
ling in the melee. How different from our depots at home! 
Yet with all how precise and orderly ! Already I have 
learned that I must not use the word depot. John Bull 
does not comprehend its significance; with him it is inva- 
riably "station." I was struck by the enormous sale of 
papers, and the vast book-stalls; and gazed at the crowds 
clustered around them, and then at the character of the 
literature, and was delighted to notice that a large number 
of American works were offered to customers. Over the 



or FOREiaN TRAVEL. 19 

door of the first-class waiting-room I read in large letters: 
*' For ladies only." Tliis command excludes a husband, 
for under no circumstances whatever is a gentleman per- 
mitted to enter the hallowed precincts. He is obliged to 
tarry elsewhere, and join his wife, or his sister, or his 
sweetheart on the platform. 

Every station is provided with a restaurant and bar, for 
the English are a nation of eaters and drinkers, and these 
dining-rooms are always filled to repletion on the arrival 
and departure of the trains; furthermore they are always 
attended by young women. Not the imaginary pretty 
barmaid, but pert, flashy, loudly dressed creatures. The 
great hotel and saloon system, managed by the partnership 
of Spiers & Pond, who are coining fabulous sums by their 
franchises, is said to employ over five hundred girls as bar- 
tenders. When I expressed my horror at this method, an 
English lady told me that the most popular man in Liver- 
pool, Mr. Samuelson, who had held the post of mayor, pre- 
vious to Mr. Forwood, owned several hundred beer shops, 
and had secured his election by the money and patronage 
thus collected and organized. 

When the herald for departure sounded, there was no 
hurrying nor rush for seats, but the passengers were shown 
to the carriages according to the class indicated on their 
ticket. Before entering, I paused to look at this novel, at 
least to me, conveyance, with a door on either side of each 
compartment. Very pleasing and luxurious indeed was 
the interior, as much so as our American drawing-room 
cars. The upholstering was navy blue cloth, finished with 
silk cords and button (you see, woman-like, 1 jot down the 
details), an ominous color, and I marvelled if this hue was 
to pervade my entire tour. As I sank into mj^ place I ob- 
served that our carriage contained six passengers, three 
on each sofa, face to lace. This was the extent of its 
seating capacity, as the sofas are divided into three sec- 
tions by projecting arms. The places thus formed are 
spacious for one, and much space is squandered; but I 
presume that this precaution has been adopted by the cir- 
cumspect English, as a means of preventing the accidental 
occurrence of travellers becoming too closely allied while 
confined in these flying prisons. T4iere lingers in my mind 
, recollections of a catastrophe that transpired in one of 
these carriages, despite this preservative, which created a 
vivacious gossip on both sides the Atlantic. 

Another delectable custom of foreign travel is being 



20 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

locked in the carriage by the guard, and left. In such a 
case one's sensations are far more apprehensive when left 
in company than when left alone. Had I been a young 
lady, I should have been agitated and ill-at-ease, but as the 
fact stands, a married one, with Mr. " Em'ly" at my side, 
I settled myself to scan my companions — two Americans 
and two English. There was no shrill whistling, nor 
blowing, nor shrieking, nor shifting trains ; no pushing 
cars back and forth, no clanging of chains, no unexpected 
collisions of carriages in the effort to get off — such delights 
we have all enjoyed at home — but we moved as smoothly- 
as if the metals had been oiled, and away we flew to 
London, six hours distant. 

For many years there was great inconvenience to travel- 
lers, in consequence of the circuitous route they hgid to 
make by existing lines, and from the extreme points at 
which their city termini were situated. The companies that 
occupy the north, northeast, and midland districts of Liv- 
erpool, were obliged to convey all their passengers in an 
omnibus from a station near the Brunswick Dock to the 
southern end of the town, entailing an expensive and vexa- 
tious transfer of baggage. Now all the annoyance of this 
wasteful system is obviated by the construction of a station 
in the centre of Liverpool, adjoining the Adelphi Hotel, 
which branches from the existing line contiguous to the 
Brunswick Dock, and is used in common by these compa- 
nies for passengers and general traffic. 

As I was fresh to the sight and to all my surroundings, 
I began to study and compare. The morning was cold, 
the atmosphere gloomy and dank, and I was chilly, with- 
out the accustomed luxuries of American travel. Long 
copper canisters, filled with hot water and placed under 
the feet, were intended to supply the absence of fire. With 
this accessory, one might have been comfortable enough, 
had not the English perseveringly kept the windows low- 
ered. Result: an ugly cold and an ill temper. There was 
no conversation save amongst the Americans; of course 
we were full of the strange scenes and novel situations, 
but I could see that if John Bull did not talk he was an 
eager and hungrj^ listener. At length silence reigned, and 
I looked out upon the country side, by which we were fly- 
ing at the rate of forty miles an hour. A dense veil of 
mist hung upon the landscape. How earnestly I desired 
the appearance of the sun to dispel all this melanchol}^ fog, 
and by his influence glorify and irradiate the picture, for I 



or FOREIGN TRAVEL. 21 

could discern the beauty of the section through which we 
were passing. 

It is winter, yet the grass is green, the trees are in full leaf, 
and the hedges strong, dark, and glossy. The little brown 
cottages are neat, prim, and cosey; very few exist out of 
the large towns, and those we noticed on the roadside were 
in clusters. 

Without exception, the stations were quiet and deserted. 
At Crewe the doors were unlocked, and a fresh re-enforce- 
ment of foot-warmers supplied. This act I hailed with 
grateful emotions. It is a town of almost entirely modern 
growth, and the home of numbers of the railway officials 
of the London and Northwestern Road, who have here a 
vast establishment for the manufacture of everything essen- 
tial to railways. 

When we reached Rugby, and I saw the train depositing 
its burden of grammar school boys, I longed to follow, not 
to school, but to Bilton Hall, formerly the home of the 
celebrated English essayist, Addison. Dr. Johnson says: 
''Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but 
not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his 
days and nights to the volumes of Addison." Remember- 
ing this, I was eager to saunter in his footprints through 
''Addison's Walk," a long avenue or favorite promenade 
in his garden, hoping that I might be imbued by some en- 
during essence of the poet's literary merits and grace. 

The more frequent clusters of habitations, the faint and 
flickering lights in the distance, that were growing clearer 
and more definite every moment, the towering spires, the 
volumes of smoke issuing from the numberless chimneys, 
were all evidences of our approach to a great city. Fifteen 
minutes more and we were in Euston Square Station, 
London, surrounded by at least a hundred porters and 
hackmen, all clamoring for patronage, and each one ad- 
hering to us with as much persistency as if they expected 
we could engage them all. I endeavored to describe the 
depot at Liverpool. This one in London exceeds my 
power. It is confusion worse confounded. 



22 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER III. 

" What, then, is to insure the pile which now towers above me 
from sharing the fate of mightier mausoleums ? The time must 
come when its gilded vaults, which now spring so softly, shall lie 
in rubbish beneath the feet ; when, instead of the sound of melody 
and praise, the wind shall whistle through the broken arches, and 
the owl hoot from the shattered tower ; when the garish sunbeam 
shall break into these gloomy mansions of death ; and the ivy 
twine around the fallen column ; and the foxglove hang its blos- 
soms about the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the dead. Thus 
man passes away ; his name perishes from record and recollection ; 
his history is as a tale that is told, and his monument becomes a 
ruin." — Washington Irving's Westminster Abbey. 

London, February, 1878. 

When I entered the atrium of the Westminster Palace 
Hotel, several evenings ago, I was awed by the grandeur 
of its architecture and appointments. The flood of light 
from the chandeliers, and the blazing fire in the glowing 
grates, on either side of the hall, were cheerinf^ signs of 
comfort and luxury. But the ample stone stairway and 
silent corridors, the floors of marble and vaulted ceilings, 
gave to it a monastic air. I was conducted to my apart- 
ments by a natty little English maid in a pale pink cotton 
gown, carrying a candle that shed a ghostly glimmer.^ 
Throwing open the door of a room that was dark and damp, 
she bade me enter. Depositing the tallow, she was about 
to make her exit, when I requested her to ""light the gas." 
Gazing at me in amazement, she informed me that there 
was no gas in the chambers. In one corner I saw a grate 
of rather limited compass, and inquired if she could light 
the fire? Replying in the affirmative, the young woman 
in the pink cotton gown, in midwinter, vanished. 

Left alone, I dwelt upon the stone floor, cheerless fire- 
place, absence of gas, and tiie old-fashioned bureau, sur- 
mounted b}'' a little toilet mirror — a counterpart of one I 
remember in my grandmother's attic, when a child, still 
retained by the family as a genealogical relic — and then, 
like a meteor, it flashed upon me that I was not in America, 
at the Continental, Piiiladelphia, or the Fifth Avenue, New 
York, but in London. The London, that is so old, that 
nothing certain is known of its origin ; the London that 
Ammianus Marcellinus, who flourished in the reign of 
Julian the Apostate, termed an ancient place, called Lon- 
dinium; that appears as a Roman station during the sov- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 23 

ereignty of Claudius; that was first fortified by Constan- 
tine the Great, and one of the theatres where some of the 
world's grandest scenes have been acted. Could I expect 
modern comforts in a cit3^ that had existed previous to the 
Christian era? I had said adieu to the Progressive Youth 
one bright day, almost three weeks ago, and was now liv- 
ing amidst the memories and habits of the centuries. I 
was buried in these reflections when my attendant in the 
summer toilet reappeared, with requisites for the fire, and 
a copper ewer of " 'ot water," which I sadly needed, after 
my long ride. Yery soon the flames were leaping and 
dancing in the chimney, and a hospitable glow pervaded 
the chamber. The one virtue of English bituminous coal is 
the readiness with which it ignites. 

It was about seven o'clock when we left the hotel, and 
passed on our way to find our first dinner in this world and 
wilderness of brick and mortar. Eager to see the mighty 
hive, we directed our footsteps to the Cafe Royal, the 
famous French restaurant, in Regent Crescent. The din 
of the populace was like the roar of Niagara, and the whole 
picture was a mixture of lights struggling through a humid, 
liazy atmosphere, a vast crowd in streets slimy with mud, 
crashing vehicles, over-dressed women, and foreign-looking 
men. It was neither Broadway nor Broad Street. I was 
like one of many gazing into a mighty arena where some 
wild carnival was en force — a theatre with a background 
of fire, and laughter, and clamorous music. But I was 
hungry, and hurried onward to the "Cafe Royal." There 
was magic in the words ; they breathed of Tortue Claire^ 
Soles au vin blanc, Tete de Veau^ Vol-au- Verity and Filet de 
hceuf au champignons. I had alread^^ tested English cook- 
ing ad nauseam. The Cafe was filled to overflowing, and 
for some moments we despaired of seats, till a young gen- 
tleman, with a swallow-tail coat, white cravat, and a marked 
foreign accent, led us through seemingly endless apart- 
ments, filled with people packed like sardines. But order 
came out of the chaos ; and finally anchored, I began to 
unravel the tangled skein. There were many French and 
Americans, some Germans, and few English. The lady 
bookkeeper, perched behind her high desk, gave her orders 
to the army of waiters like a true commandant. But the 
dinner — -delicate, dainty, and delicious 1 Shall I rehearse 
all the fresh and savory tidbits of this meal? No! That 
would be uncharitable! Eight o'clock, and with it cigars! 
Smoking is in order at that hour — the habit of the Latin 



24 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

countries; so we fled out into the street, under the stars — 
stars ! No, into the dense floating vapor, to inliale the fog. 
Mingling in the mass of humanity, we wandered on to Pic- 
cadilly. Before me rose a formidable pile, one illumination 
from turret to foundation-stone. It was the Criterion, 
a theatre and restaurant combined; dining-rooms on every 
floor, kitchen in the fifth story, and the theatre three stories 
under ground. It was too late to attend the play, but as 
my English friend who accompanied us had determined that 
we should see all that was possible this first night in Lon- 
don, he proposed for us to look in at the great bar-room. 
He swung open the door, and I, ardent for novelty, fol- 
lowed. A pandemonium indeed ! I should have liked to 
study this medley of men ; but before I had obtained a 
first glimpse, we were waved back by the helmeted sentinel 
who was on guard at the entrance, with the polite, but de- 
cided remark: "No admittance for ladies at the bar after 
nine o'clock." Thus was I greeted on my arrival in a 
foreign land. My husband then informed the outlying 
picket that I was not a " lady^^ who sought admittance to 
the bar, but only an American woman who wished to look 
in. Here, at least, the sterner sex had it all to themselves, 
but not so in the surging myriads outside. Where were they 
all going ? Ah, I fear me, they were all blent in one dread 
course, down, down, to the dark shores of sin and misery, 
and death ! 

The first sight of a great city is YGvy like the first sight 
of the ocean : it overwhelms you. There is so much of it 
and so little of yourself, that j'ou feel like a feather tem- 
pest tost, and a painful sensation of loneliness, or rather 
nothingness, crept over me, as I walked back, past the 
house where Charles I was executed, Westminster Abbey, 
and the House of Parlianient, all seen through a cloud of 
blue-gray mist. For over two thousand years this tide of 
humanity, now quite four millions of souls, has been grow- 
ing and going, increasing and unceasing, living and dying, 
each life valuable to its possessor and valueless to its neigh- 
bor. With these reflections I retired to — prayers. I rested 
superbly, and when I wakened the next morning it was still 
dark, but my monitor warned me of the hour of nine, so I 
rose and dressed by candlelight, for the fog seemed to have 
gathered more densely than ever. It was becoming mo- 
notonous. 

My first sensation on entering Westminster Abbey was 
that of a cold, cavernous, grave-like chill. The twilight 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 25 

glamour was very odd. The day was so dark, that even 
the illuminated windows were vailed, but soon my eyes 
became accustomed to the influence of the royal sanctuary. 
What added to the religious emotions that thronged tlirough 
my mind, was the dead silence of the immensity, only broken 
by the occasional intoning of the vast organ, blended with 
human voices, rehearsing a symphony for a coming service. 
No loud talking; the uncovered gentlemen followed the 
ladies through the long aisles, and studied the carved effi- 
gies of the departed heroes and statesmen, kings, queens, 
princes and poets, or deciphered the fading inscriptions on 
the crumbling tombs. No one can be indifferent to the 
atmosphere of Westminster Abbey. You almost come pre- 
pared to yield to it; and you expect much and are not dis- 
appointed. No traveller, old or young, leaves it without 
increased reverence for the great Englishmen of the past, 
or without gathering information, never to be forgotten. 
When you recollect that this old abbe}^ is situated on a spot 
originally surrounded by the waters of the Thames, and 
that there is a record in the old chapter-house, showing 
that the celeln-ated Domesday Book, compiled in the time 
of William the Norman, was kept there, you have some 
idea of the vast antiquity of this venerable pile. I could 
have passed da3^s instead of hours within its precincts. 
Old as it was, it was very fresh and new to me. The dead 
were not dead, but so many living lessons. The red and 
golden windows, the wainscoted choir, the mosaic pave- 
ments, the altar-piece, the screens, each a precious memento 
of the ages, recalled mj' youthful readings, and added to 
the fascination of the majestic temple. In fancy the royal 
ghosts rose from their marble beds and gave to every le- 
gend a realistic glow. Henry III ; Edward I and Queen 
Eleanor; Edward III and Queen Philippa; Richard II and 
Queen Anne, and glorious Harry Y of Agincourt, Crecy 
and Poitiers ; and I can well believe how the enthusiastic 
poet thrills with the fire of his new awakening as for the 
first time in his life he stands before the monuments and 
memorials of Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Addi- 
son, Garrick, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and their contempora- 
ries. 

I stood b3^thestone laid overthegraveofCharlesDickens, 
and I recalled the delight I had extracted from Little NeAU 
David Copper jield^ Nicholas Nickleby^ Christmas Carol, 
and all the other lovely creations of his myriad mind. 
But is there no memorial to Bvron ? " No ! we are too good 
3 



26 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

for that," answered an English lady at my side. Yes, they 
are too good for that, I mused ; they reserve their idolatry 
for profligate kings like the second Charles, and for roues 
like the ''■first gentleman of England," Beau Brummel's 
friend, the dissolute Prince of Wales. 



LETTER lY. 

"Two scraps of foundation, some fragments of lace, 
A shower of French rosebuds to drop over the face ; 
Fine ribbons and feathers, with crape and illusion, 
Then mix and derange them in graceful confusion. 
Inveigle some fairy out roaming for pleasure, 
And buy the slight favor of taking her measure ; 
The length and the breadth of her dear little pate, 
And hasten a miniature frame to create ; 
Then pour as above the bright mixture upon it. 
And lo ! you possess such a love of a bonnet." 

Anonymous. 

London, February, 1878. 

From the earliest ages France seems to have been the 
originator and sovereign of costumes and customs. In 
the year 55 B.C., when Julius Csesar invaded Britain, he 
found the inhabitants of Kent the most enlightened, and 
Tacitus says "they were near and like the Gauls," from 
whom they had acquired the arts of dressing^ spinning, 
d^-eing, and weaving wool. Somewhere I have read that 
the early Britons lived continually in 2)uris naturalibiis^ 
but Caesar himself corrects that vulgar error when he tells 
us that even the least civilized were clad in skins, while 
those in the southern districts, like the Gauls, were not 
only completely, but splendidl}' attired. That they punc- 
tured their bodies in numerous devices of animals, flowers, 
and leaves, stained them blue with their favorite herb, glas 
lya^ and flung off their garments when about to rush into 
battle, we have ample authority. Even the famous tartan 
plaids were first woven in France, for are they not to this 
day called ''the garb of old Gaul"? 

As I strolled along Regent Street, Oxford Street, Bond 
Street, and the Strand, I saw that these people still as- 
sume to follow the fashions set by their neighbors across 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 21 

the Channel, for all the shops were made attractive by the 
display of Paris bonnets, Paris costumes, Paris mantles, 
and Paris shoes and stockings, and gloves. And as I 
looked at these beautiful goods, and then at the myriads 
of plain, cumbrous females passing by, I marvelled who 
the purchasers and wearers of these dainty confections 
could be. Certainly not these heavy, stolid women, who 
filled the streets and added to the oppression of the atmos- 
phere. It seemed to me that some Women's Rights or 
Goody-Goody society had just adjourned, and these women 
with the large feet, whose size was enhanced by rough 
leather boots, cut low around the ankle, and the broad flat 
heels, short black dresses, and heavy cloth coats, generally 
a straw bonnet in February, and invariabl}'- an umbrella, 
were returning from the seance. They all appeared to have 
been blocked out after one model. Surely these Parisian 
morsels should revolutionize the unbroken conformation 
of these British Yenuses. No ! Unlike all other nations, 
the Englishwoman is never Gallicized by a French toilet; 
and the potency of the salient points of her form Angli- 
cizes the most ravishing French tidbits. 

In Regent Crescent I noticed the most exquisite gloves, 
combinations of two delicate shades of kid — eau de nile 
embroidered with myrtle, and myrtle cuffs ; del bleu and 
flesh tint; ecru and brown; pink and fawn — and I longed 
to possess these novelties, yet I never saw a pair worn by 
any of the ladies at entertainments. The gentlemen I note 
in my saunters are universally more careful in their attire 
than their sisters, being at all times well shod and well 
gloved. This seems to be a reminiscence of the ages, for 
gloves were A^ery generally worn in the twelfth century, 
and prior to that period the sleeves were made long enough 
to draw over the hand, and thus stood in lieu of the later 
perquisite. And I mourn, as a vision of Chestnut Street 
floats before me, thronged by my countrymen on their way 
to the office or counting-house in unblacked boots and un- 
gloved hands, generally thrust deeply into the recesses of 
their pockets. 

There are innumerable coiffure establishments, with 
showy window dressings, and again I ask, by whom are 
they patronized ? For surely the prototype from which 
Mrs. Bull and her heifers have copied, could not have been 
conceived by any of these artists. The hair of the London 
female without variation is parted in the centre and 
drawn down very closely behind the ears to the nape of 



28 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the neck, where it is twisted into an exceedingly small coil, 
about the size of an ordinary lemon. No crimps, no curls, 
V no puffs, no braids ! This austere and rigid lieaddress has 
I the stamp of age and durability, verily: it looks as if it 
were coeval with the Saxons and Danes. It cannot merit 
the displeasure of the clergy, and make an occasion for 
tiiem to declaim from the pulpit against the fashionable 
follies of the fair sex, which was a frequent event in the 
fourteenth and fifteentli centuries, when the coiffure of the 
ladies was compared to horned snails, to hearts, to uni- 
corns, and even to a gibbet, for indeed, the reticulated 
headdress, spreading out on each side, when covered with 
a veil, might be fairly assimilated to the cross tree of those 
days. Later on, Addison, in the Spectator^ likens the 
steeple "headgear" to the commode oy tower. This gothic 
building might have been carried much higher, had it not 
been for the zeal and determination with which tlie famous 
monk, Thomas Conecte, fought it down ; he travelled from 
town to town to preach against the monstrous ornament. 
By his eloquence he so warmed and animated the women 
against this absurdity that they threw off the commodes in 
the middle of his sermon and made a bonfire of them. 
While the hoi}" man was in their midst this enormity van- 
ished, but when he had departed, it reappeared, and as 
Monsieur Paradin says, "the women that, like snails in a 
fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again as 
soon as the danger was over." From the earliest dates we 
see that the British frizzed and arranged their hair, after 
the style of the French, in the most elaborate fashion ; the 
problem is, why the ungraceful severity of the present 
reigning mode? 

1 have always regarded the English lady as rather a 
moral than an artistic creation, — a production of sherry, 
brown s'out, roast beef and leather. She is plain and un- 
prepossessing. I have met English girls with a profusion 
of exquisite golden hair, but they have none of the delicate 
flesh-tints and classic contour that generall}' accompany 
the same sunny shade of hair at home. I cannot rhapso- 
dize over their soul thrilling eyes, nor sylph like forms! 
The figure is firm and ample, and speaks loudly of a robust 
ai)petite, healthy exercise, and no tight lacing. That this 
nation of women did fall victims to this evil in the twelfth 
century we are sure, and in the romance of the "Lay^ of 
Syr Launfal," written about the year 1300, Lady Triamore 
is described as — 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 29 

" Clad in purple pall, 
With geutyll body and middle small.'''' 

In London, everything may be procured for money, ex- 
cept taste; that is a commodity in which the bovine Johns 
do no traffic. The Londoners, liowever much they may 
deny it, fly over to Paris to buy modes for themselves, and 
I can frankly sa}^, they derive no benefit from their visits. 
A vast deal of pretension and little effect is eminently 
characteristic of the English costume. And why is this? 
when all that is rechef^che and effective, embraced in a 
female outfit, is exhibited at the conspicuous bijouteries of 
Peter Robinson and Marshall and Snellgrove, on Regent 
and Oxford Streets ! 

How odd it seems to me, to be compelled to remove my 
bonnet, before I am permitted to occupy a first-class seat 
at any of the theatres ! And how incongruous to see the 
ladies at the circus in a plain cashmere dress, and their 
hair liberally decorated with flowers. 

Americans who come abroad and expect to purchase 
goods for absolutely nothing are always disappointed. 
There are shops in London where articles may be bought 
at really very low figures. But, to become posted in these 
establishments, one must live in a city for some time, or 
possess a valuable acquaintance, who may render such a 
service. Strangers must pay for their ignorance in what- 
ever country they roam. 

The great jewelry shops are very unlike ours. Instead 
of adorning the windows with statuary and painting and 
ceramics, as we do at home, they expose the greater por- 
tion of their stock to the eye of the passer-by. And very 
beautiful and ornate are their displays. Frequently I lin- 
ger at the shop-windows in old Bond Street, and feast my 
eyes upon the diamonds, pearls, and rubies, the pale-pink 
coral, and the delicate blue turquoise, these, combined with 
spark diamonds, enjoy a prominent position among the 
costly ornaments of the present day. 



3* 



30 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER y. 

" No sun, no moon ! 

No morn, no noon ! 
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day : 

No sky, no earthly view ; 

No distance looking blue ; 
No road, no street, no t'other side the way. 
No top to any steeple. 
No recognition of familiar people ; 
No travelling at all, no locomotion, 
No inkling of the way, no motion ; 
No go by land or ocean, 
No trail, no post ; 
No news from any foreign coast !" 

Thomas Hood. 

London, February, 1878. 

The fog continues to envelop the great metropolis like 
a pall. Dismal indeed is the aspect. It is a funeral dirge 
in vapor; a dream of darkness; a vision of gloom; a mel- i 
ancholy antiphonj'. The bright sun is extinguished, and 
the stars do wander darkling in eternal space, rayless and 
pathless, and the vicious earth swings blackening in the 
air; morn comes and goes, and comes and brings no day^ 
but men do not forget tlieir passions. Were it not for t"fie 
infinite variety of diversion in London now, life would be- 
come intolerable to the strang-er and traveller. To minister 
to the appetites of every age, sex, condition, seems to b€L 
tiie general study. And that such efforts are not vain, is 
proved by the vast multitudes w4io flock hither, at all sea- 
sons, to enjoy the great metropolis. Here the musical 
critic, the literati, the blase pleasure-seeker, indulge their 
propensities, and here the prodigal, the man of science, tlie 
traveller, the inventor, gather as to a harbor and a home. 
London is an endless encyclopaedia for the uses and im- 
provement of mankind. 

Regardless of the cloud upon the surface of the earth, 4 
yesterday we took the underground railway to Baker 
Street, Portman Square, to pass a couple of hours in the 
Museum and Historical Gallery of Madame Tussaud. 

Underground railways are the outgrowth of the last 
twenty years. The facilities for travel on the surface in 
London became insufficient, and then began the subterra- 
nean surve3'^s. Tunnels in the earth do not require the 
drill or the explosive; but the permanent walling and arch- 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 31 

ing requisite to safet}^, are frequentlj'' more expensive than 
blasting the solid rock. Yet in this populous hive the 
danger to property and to person make the tunnel prefer- 
able, regardless of cost. So they mapped the lower mun- 
dane regions as Agassiz mapped, and searched, and sounded 
the floors of old ocean ; and now lower London, or rather 
invisible London, has almost as many miles of road per- 
meating it, as the unseen arteries and fibres that permeate 
the human frame. We procured our tickets at Westminster 
to Baker Street Station, over two miles distant, for two 
pence apiece. I descended a long flight of steps, and 
found myself in a clean, well-lighted cellar. There was 
no sepulchral air ; it was very like an}^ other depot. Long 
platforms, thronged by busy mortals, with bright faces ; 
bookstands, the walls illuminated with showy playbills 
and advertisements. I saw a crimson star in the distance, 
and then the train shot into the station like a comet. 
There was opening and slamming of doors ; the railway 
guards boisterouslv shriekino- the name of the station in 
unintelligible sounds; a rush out of the incoming passen- 
gers, and a rush in of the departing. I was pushed into 
a carriage b}'^ an official, and again the door was slammed 
in such a way as to lead me to believe that the guard 
wlio made the most noise received the largest salary, and 
that the}" were all in competition. This was my first 
acquaintance with a railway in a tunnelled city. The door 
was locked, and off the comet shot, to thread its way 
through long caverns, past open spaces, where the route 
crossed the upper streets, past other comets flying in an 
opposite direction. Baker Street! was shouted by the 
guard, which I never could have recognized, had not my 
eye caught the words on a sign. Again I was pushed out 
like a parcel. Mounting to the outer and upper atmo- 
sphere, J found myself in a broad airy street, full of shops 
and people, hansoms, broughams, organ-grinders, and gin- 
palaces — a wild din of life. 

A short walk brought me to the famous exhibition. 
Madame Tussaud's gallery is Westminster Abbey in wax, 
but it is not a sepulchre; it embraces the living as well as 
the dead celebrities. It is neither so choice nor so chaste 
as the great Cathedral, as we find here all the notorieties, 
from Lydia Thompson to Jesus Christ: the ballet-dancer 
and the tragedian, the murderer and the murdered, the 
king and the clown. These effigies are lifelike and artistic, 
and very often capital copies of the originals, particularly 



32 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the counterparts of English celebrities. But oh ! how Mad- 
ame has blasphemed in wax, murdered in mechanism, and 
travestied in spermaceti, the great ones of America. Hep 
ideal of General Grant is a fair-haired boy of nineteen, that 
of Abraham Lincoln, a black-bearded clergyman in ''swell 
clothes." But nothing could have been more valuable than 
the historic groups of the royal families of England, from 
the jS'ormans down. There sits Bluebeard, Henry Tudor, 
his six wives clustered around him, each one looking serene 
and radiant in the sunlight of this magnanimous (?) man's 
favor; his hand rests upon the young prince's head — the 
future Edward YI — and sweet Anne Boleyn wears the 
famous yellow dress in which the capricious monarch loved 
to see her. I was ever so much interested in Madame 
Guelph, as Her Majesty is called; her nine children and 
four of her grandchildren are near her, with the handsome 
and virtuous Prince Albert; slightly in the background, 
and on the right of the Queen, is seen the man who com- 
bines "the genius of Bolingbroke, the wit of Canning, and 
.the eloquence of Burke" — the omnipotent Premier. 1 was 
much impressed by the wonderful likeness of the hero of 
Wagram, Marengo, Austerlitz, Eylau, Friedland, and by 
the eloquent relics of his soldier, domestic, and consular 
life. The tigures of the ill-fated Louis Napcjleon, and the 
beautiful and queenly Eugenie are side bj^ side. They are 
all here; from the old man. Emperor William, and Bis- 
marck of Germany, to the sad Czar of the Russias ; from 
the Chinese teaman to the Ameer of Afghanistan ; from the 
white-haired Emperor of Brazil to the Viceroy of Egypt; 
the youthful kings of Italy and Spain; and Thiers, Guizot, 
Trochu, Gambetta, and Cassignac. 

Madame Tussaud, the disciple of the art of the ancient 
Yerrochio and Orsino, was a native of Berne, Switzerland ; 
at an early age she was placed under the supervision of her 
uncle, M. Curtius, who was artist to Louis XYI, and by 
him she was instructed in the fine arts. Later she was 
summoned to the palace as the artistic adviser of Madame 
Elizabeth, the sister of the hapless king. Passing much 
of her time at the Tuilleries and Yersailles, she became 
acquainted with the nobility and genius of the French 
court. One of her ablest works is the portrait model of 
the celebrated wit, Yoltaire. In 1802 she bade adieu to 
France with her valuable collection of figures, to exhibit 
them in the principal cities of Great Britain and Ireland. 

The ceroplastic art seems to have degenerated with the 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 33 

centuries, and at present it is held in low esteem. The 
power, skill, and ingenuity manifested in the major por- 
tion of the Tussaud collection should impart to the art 
some of the pristine gloiy by which it was hallowed in the 
days of Michael Angelo, who did not deem it below his mer- 
its to produce wax-figures. Such representations were held 
in high repute by the early Romans, who placed to the 
honor of their ancestors their wax-figures in the vestibules. 
Tiiat time may not revive this usage I sincerely hope; I 
should not fancy it cheerful to have long-departed grand- 
mothers and grandfathers constantly hovering over our 
portals. 

Madame Tussaud was an economical genius (a rare speci- 
men indeed), for my English guide, who had been attending 
the museum from childhood, told me that the same figures 
were made to serve many purposes, that the cloths and 
faces, with slight remodelling of noted characters in one 
decade, had been used for others in the decade previous. 

It is a short ride from Baker Street to the " Dore Gallery" 
in New Bond Street, Avhere the celebrated chef-d^oeuvre, 
"Christ leaving the Prsetorium," is still attracting thou- 
sands, though it has already enjoyed five long years of 
sovereignty. I studied this picture for some time before 
I fully appreciated the wealth and art and time expended 
on it; it is so vast and powerful that it dazzles you, one 
must pause until mind and eye expand sufficiently to com- 
prehend the movement and multitude, the light and the 
shade, the glow and the gloom of this splendid conception. 
It possesses the vigor of Angelo without his contortions, 
the power of Rubens without his dramatic effect, the ra- 
diance of Tintoretto, the sweetness of Rafaelle, the melan- 
choly of Guido, and the harmony of Van Dyke. Gustav 
Dore, to use an old metaphor, not only mixes his colors 
with fine oils, but with brains. 

The picture illustrates one of the most pathetic incidents 
in the early sacred drama. See! There is the sublime 
actor in the snowj^ and seamless raiment, the crimson dew 
of his precious blood is upon his brow, as he descends the 
steep steps of the Prsetorium. The assemblage seem awed 
into silence by His grief and gentle dignity, for He is '^ex- 
ceeding sorrowful unto death." There, against the back- 
ground of gathering gloom, and volcanic darkness, are 
Pontius Pilate and Herod ; Judas shrinks from the re- 
proachful gaze of his master ; a momentary flash of vivid 
feeling crosses the face of a boy, as if struck by one of the 



34 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

soldiers and you imagine you hear the exclamation of pain. 
Close by is the august but cruslied Virgin mother, but far 
more touching was the spectacle of Magdalene; she it was 
who claimed my tears and sympath3% True, Mary the 
mother is l)ereft of her Soil, but to the other Mary there 
has fallen utter misery, desolation, and solitude. She has 
lost all, for she has lost her Saviour, who drew her from 
the fathomless gulf of sin and death; she has lost her 
Guardian, who led her straying feet into the golden paths 
of virtue; she has lost her King, who protected and loved 
her; and she has lost her God, whom she worshipped. 



LETTEK YI. 

" Once I was pure as the snow — but I fell ; 
Fell, like the snow-flakes, from heaven to hell ; 
Fell to be tramped as the tilth of the street ; 
Fell to be scoffed, to be spit on, and beat. 
Pleading, 
Cursing, 

Dreading to die, 
Selling my soul to whoever would buy, 
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread, 
Hating the living and fearing the dead." 

Beautiful Snow. 

London, February, 1878. 
I HAD not been a resident of this foreign city long, ere I 
was impressed by the terrible disparity between the ex- 
tremes of wealth and the extremes of poverty. The rich 
are very ricli, and the poor are very poor. The rich learn 
to rule, while the poor learn to obey. London is great in 
its opulence, great in its mendicity, great in its virtue, and 
great in its vice, and these extremes are frequently so 
closely allied, as to be next-door neighbors. While in 
Liverpool, I attempted to draw the line l)etween the dissi- 
pations and the distresses of the poor, and I si)eedily 
reached the conclusion that the chief cause of pauperism 
was rum; tliat much of it issued from the excessive use of 
gin and beer. That which originated in a custom, ulti- 
mately became a necessity. The two-pence or three-pence 
■ begged on the sidewalk and invested in this vile poison, 
if expended on bread and coarse meat, would prove the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 35 

salvation of thousands of these wretched creatures. But 
oh! what is this demon that pursues mankind? Legions 
of fresh and health}^ recruits falling in the ranks each year 
to be led along the dark shores of sin to the seas of death. 
Is there nothing to stop its ravages ? It spreads its gloomy 
wings over happy homes, it is the mother of murder, the 
progenitor of defalcation, the parent of lies. Crime in 
whatsoever attitude it may appear is the inevitable off- 
spring of this defiling fiend. It devastates families and 
pollutes the brightest mind. 

It was only when I came to London that I realized the 
force of these impressions, for it is only here that I have 
seen the piteous and pitiful depravity of my own sex; not 
the poor painted butterflies who flicker and fall in the fiery 
gulf of the dazzling sin of the streets, but those who suffer 
simply from cureless destitution, who wander apparently 
all through the long night without shelter or food, and 
scarcely any clothing; bleared and bloated women clamor- 
ing for more whiskey or struggling with their imbruted 
husbands. This direful pauperism, together with vice, has 
led to an organization of beneficent ladies in London, 
which, thank God, is not necessarj^ in our happ^^ country. 
A large hall is procured amidst the very haunts of the 
destitute and reckless classes, and during the severe and 
dreary winter nights many noble women of exalted rank 
remain here, to receive and reason with the poor fallen out- 
casts who are conducted hither by friendly policemen from 
the slums and narrow lanes. The varied emotions that 
rend the bosoms of these frail strays as they issue from 
the dark and dismal highways to the light, and warmth, 
and welcome of these great parish halls, where hot coffee 
and homely food are provided for them, have more than 
once roused my womanly S3^mpathies. Some of them are 
conspicuous in their tawdry finery, and generally under the 
influence of gin — others are shoeless and hatless — locks 
dishevelled, face and hands soiled — others shivering: 
tlirough their threadbare clothes, and again those who 
wear a hostile and defiant mien ; all unsexed by the fre- 
quent contact with privation and sin. But oh! to see the 
soothing, tender, and forgiving manner of the clergymen 
and humane ladies, who greet the fugitives as they enter 
from the cold and cheerless outer world. There are no 
reproaches, no long sermons, no moralizing, but now and 
then a touching hymn and a plaintive prayer for the 
rescue of the wanderers, which go directly to the heart. I 



36 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

have seen the tears coursins^ down the rouo;ed and whited 
cheeks of these ill-starred girls from the purlieus of the 
music-halls and gin-palaces. 

There seems to be a strange fascination in a great city 
for these depraved beings. They prefer the filth in which 
they exist, and would rather starve in its dens and alleys, 
or be confined in the lowest of its prisons than emigrate to 
other countries, or honestl}'^ toil for sustenance; and the 
method employed 1)3^^ some of the paupers to gain this 
living is worthj^ of a special chapter. The street Arabs 
are simply multitudinous. Tliey are a fraternity of their 
own, indigenous to London, without parallel in any other 
section of the world, generally in league with the older 
ruffians, men and w^omen, adepts in all kinds of wickedness, 
ever read}' to face any risk or run any danger. They pour 
down upon and besiege the foot-passengers in hordes. 
They attach themselves to your person, and adhere with 
the utmost tenacity. When you hail a hansom or four- 
wheeler, in the twinkling of an e^'e you are surrounded by 
as many evil spirits as sprang upon "old Rip" on tliat 
eventful evening in the Catskills when he took his nap, 
and these English manikins emanate from every corner in 
the same mysterious manner. There is the old man, the 
ragged girl, the dirty bo3^, and the consumptive woman 
with the baby hidden under her scanty shawl, all eager to 
render some service, and receive compensation. 

A couple of days ago, as I was walking up Parliament 
Street, a little boy sprang before me and proceeded to 
throw summersaults on the pavement for quite a block, 
and it was only when he demanded pay, that I became 
aware that these feats of agility had been indulged for my 
special delectation. Further on two little girls started off 
on a waltz for m}^ amusement, and they, of course, wished 
pennies for their pains. Now these children all belong to 
some of the older alms-seekers, who stand on the curb 
turning their sightless e^es, withered hands, or deformed 
and offensive limbs into capital. There are regular com- 
panies formed by the beggars, and each one perambulates 
his own circuit; sometimes tiiey exchange beats in order 
to equalize their receipts. They are numerous in St. Giles, 
Seven-dials, King Street,' Slioreditch, and St. Paul's 
Churchyard; there are restaurants and public houses in 
the vicinity, and even places of amusement entirely sup- 
ported by mendicant patrons, who congregate at these 
resorts at night and spend considerable of their earnings(?) 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 31 

in hot suppers and liquor. But even the landlord who 
subsists from the bount}^ of such characters, does not en- 
tertain the most exalted opinion of their moral rectitude, 
for the forks, knives, and spoons are chained to the tables. 

Another profitable source of emolument is the shoe trade. 
These bullies or swaggerers, excite charity for shoes, by 
appearing on the streets barefooted, their feet scarified and 
scabby; the old shoes begged they translate into new ones 
which they sell, and thus net a sum each day that enables 
them to live well. 

Vice is one of the admitted facts of this awful London, 
even organized vice, vice in all degrees ; but then so is virtue. 
The wealthy tradesmen and the aristocracy do many grace- 
ful acts of charity in secret, and those who are in the habit 
of declaiming against the luxury and extravagance of the 
nobility, do not know what enormous sums are paid by some 
of the latter to relieve the poor. Yet, the rule of oppres- 
sion prevails too entirely throughout the United Kingdom 
to make a happy and healthy community. I heard some 
melancholy stories about the poor in Wales, in what are 
called the nail factories, that I should have rejected as un- 
true had not the facts been given to me by a member of the 
House of Commons. Delicate young women work more 
arduousl}^, than our southern negro slaves ever worked, for 
the support of drunken husbands, whose only escape from 
the workhouse is by the patient and uncomplaining toil of 
their wives. Suspension of lal)or in the collieries, cotton 
mills, brickyards, and lace factories, has produced a state 
of affairs that baffles description. 

These are some of the figures of British pauperism, as I 
contrast them with other countries. A few j^ears ago Eng- 
land paid $30,000,000 or $16 a head for the support of her 
poor, while in France the cost for tlieir poor was only 
$3,100,000, or $2.64 a head. In 1873 there were eight hun- 
dred and fifty-five thousand six hundred arid eighty-nine 
paupers in England, and the cost of these in 1860 was $36.25 
apiece. In Germany, $7, and in France only $2.50. So 
British pauperism is ever in the ascendant. Even the word 
found its birth in England in the seventeenth or eighteenth 
century, to describe that condition of penury where self- 
support is not attempted, and where the basest vices are 
bred. Pauperism dates back to the reign of Henry YIII., 
when the breaking up of the feudal system and the dismant- 
ling of the monasteries, threw very many people upon their 
own endeavors for support. Extreme poverty was the con- 
4 



38 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

sequence, but a law was passed to the effect, that "valient 
beggars and idle loiterers" were to be avoided, and only the 
old and feeble, and the halt were to receive alms, the able 
bodied men to be put to work. But when the daughter of 
Anne Boleyn ascended the throne the law was revolution- 
ized, and for the first time a legal right was given to every 
one to claim relief. Very often the condition of the pauper 
was superior to that of the independent laborer; if the 
wages of a parish were considered insufficient for the sup- 
port of a family, allowances were granted, and more money 
bestowed for the maintenance of an illegitimate than for a 
legitimate child. Of course such laws only tended to sj^read 
the infection of immorality and sloth. 

What a contrast our blessed country forms to this dole- 
ful state of government! There is very little native pau- 
perism at home. All of this terrible plague that we have 
in the United States is foreign-born, or of foreign extrac- 
tion. We have towns and villages where not one pauper is 
to be found. Why? It is a question readily answered. 
The influence of liberal education, the self-respect imposed 
by political and social privileges, the low prices of land and 
the right of every man to become a property holder. If 
England would follow this example of her truant offspring, 
and educate rather than relieve her masses, the gigantic 
evil would be greatly abated. So noble a country should 
labor to remove this foul stain from her escutcheon. No 
community- can be happ)^ while men are allowed to "look to 
charitj' as a fund on which they may confidently depend." 



LETTER VII. 

*' Here is the nursery of Art, 
Here millions gather glad to see, 
The treasures of this mighty mart, 
Taken from worlds long past, and yet to be." 

Anonymous. 

London, February, 1878. 

Had I come abroad previous to the grand pageant which 
signalized the cetenary of our independence I am quite 
sure I should have raved about all the wonderful things in 
this whirlpool of a London. But the education I received 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 39 

ill art, science, and invention, while attending that micro- 
cosm of marvels, disciplined me to examine more soberly 
the beautiful creations that were novelties to Americans 
before the International Exhibition. And so these exqui- 
site displays do not surprise me now. 

Therefore, passing through the South Kensington Mu- 
seum I was a little like the Indian who saw nothing in 
the white man's country to stir his stolid nature. I was 
about to add, the institution has cause to be jealous of our 
Philadelphia Exhibition, but I will attempt no compari- 
sons, they are always odious. Left by itself this great 
museum would be the ne plus ultra of schools and galleries. 
If I attempted to describe South Kensington Museum, I 
should fail to be original. I could only walk in the foot- 
prints of my predecessors. Thought is sure to dull and 
dampen the ecstasy of the neophyte in a foreign country. 
We crave to be novel, and yet how impossible wlien so 
many older and wiser judges with all these facts in their 
memories, devote their best energies to this old world ! 
When I entered this repository of curiosities I was stunned 
by the dead silence. Silence seems to be one of the char- 
acteristics of the English — silence of motion and of 
speech. In the vast hotels we never hear a footfall nor a 
loud word despite the stone floors and lofty ceilings, aud 
here I find the same quiet order. All is dumb as death! 
Perhaps you have noticed the eloquence of unspoken soli- 
tude at times. Some one has said "order was heaven's 
first law," and order is always stillness, but such complete 
noiselessness as we have here is oppressive. 

There were numbers dispersed through the salons, and 
as I watched them in the distant alcoves and sheltered re- 
treats, thej^ grew into a multitude of men and women ; but 
they moved rather like shadows than substances, and they 
spoke only in whispers. They conveyed knowledge and 
ideas to each other by signs, and pointed to the catalogues, 
to paintings, and statues, and maps, and cases. This silent 
lanoruas^e is contaoious, and as I studied them I uncon- 
sciously sank into their fashion, and lost my own identity 
in the voiceless concourse. My words were hushed, and I 
began to converse by motions, not from choice, but the 
spell was upon me. I soon became accustomed to and 
rather enjoyed the speechless conversation. I speedily 
found myself holding colloquies with the objects, antique 
and recent. Every statue, relic, chart, fossil, and engrav- 
ing could articulate ideas to my hungry mind. I passed 



40 PICTl'RES AND PORTRAITS 

two daj's in this splendid academy, and feel that it ought 
to have l)een two weeks. Shall 1 tell 3'ou of the living at 
the side of the skeletons, or of the living before their por- 
traits ? Shall I tell you of science, of which I know little ; 
or shall it be politics, of which I know nothing? What 
interested me most was the wealth of art, skill, ingenuity, 
and novelty in snuff-boxes, fans, ceramics, and medallions. 

A collection of snuff-boxes, in etuis, gold, enamel, jew- 
elled, etc., loaned hy Mr. C. Coding, fills several large 
cases, and I bent over these exquisite morsels until head 
and heart reeled. The prodigality of expense, time, and 
genius on these gewgaws is marvellous. Gems b}^ famous 
Dutch, French, and Italian artists adorned the collection. 
There was one of scaly gold resembling a serpent's epi- 
dermis; the lid was eml)ellished with a matchless mosaic 
of Yenus and Adonis upon the emerald and velvety turf, 
at tlieir feet babbled a silvery brook, casting a spray over 
tiny pebbles. The goddess was endeavoring to cajole the 
cold and chaste youth, who received with utter indifference 
the i^roffered favors of the divine coquette. There were 
splendid enamels containing devices and legendary emblems 
in diamonds, some of jasper, some of block-crystal, others 
of sardonyx, and choice moss-agate. There were the pro- 
ductions of all nations and of all ages, proclaiming how 
for centuiies the inhalation of volatile dust was the ruling 
fashion of society in Europe. The estimated value of this 
array of snuff-boxes is thousands of pounds sterling. 

The next cases that engaged my woman's time and at- 
tention were those containing fans. One section was con- 
secrated wholly' to a curious and elegant exhibition of fans, 
mostly the compilation of one lady ; many of exquisite 
French design; satin, tulle, gauze, parchment, and the so- 
called chicken-skin ; and these were beautified with paint- 
ings by such clever craftsmen as Marie Bonheur, A. Solde, 
Edouard Moreau, and others of equal subtlety. There was 
tlie novel Pompadour that forms a peifect oval when ex- 
panded, and the folding fan of Catherine de Medicis ; the 
eccentric Lombard siiapes of tiie seventeenth century, and 
brilliant tuft fans of peacock and parrot featiiers with jew- 
elled handles. Fans of wood and fans of ivory; fans of 
great elegance from Rome, Greece, and Egypt, and even 
from the fatherland of fans, China. 1 have heard it con- 
tended that fans are a feminine appendage, and in the 
countries where the use of fans is a national custom, the 
salient characteristics of the natives are pre-eminently 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 41 

effeminate. But I have no fair samples to offer. They are 
as essential to a gentleman in Japan and China as his boots, 
and I am sure the Turk contradicts any such doctrine. 
True, he wears petticoats, but do you believe the fan and 
farthingale could effeminate the stern, tyrannical Giaour ? 

In this collection may also be classed two cases of min- 
iatures, the property of Earl Beauchamp ; a blazoning of 
gold and fine painting on ivory by the illustrious artists of 
his day, likenesses of his family in a variety of gorgeous 
costumes and head-dresses ; several of pretty Nell Gwynne 
and Kitty Clive, and the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire. 
The renowned Mr. Beresford Hope displays a vast amount 
of ecclesiastical utensils, clocks, ivor^^ carvings, and ena- 
mels ; among them a curious cross of gold, incrusted with 
Cloisonne enamel, one of the earliest specimens made in 
Constantinople, in the eleventh century. Beautiful samples 
ofVitrodi J'?^^■71a, or glass lace- work; specimens of Schmelze, 
Avanturine, Millefiore, of the colored glass of Yenice, and 
numerous vessels of early Yenetian manufacture, having a 
horny hue and texture. In the western arcade is the harp- 
sichord of Handel, a curiosity in its way ; but it recalled 
to my mind the stories I liad heard of his uncontrollable 
temper, and I was rather surprised to see it in such excel- 
lent repair, for the musical genius had rather a careless 
way of disposing of tilings, as well as people, when he was 
in a rage. Then, again, I remembered that he had never 
loved a woman. Can a man have music in his soul, who 
has never experienced the divine passion? Near it stands 
a spinnet, dated 15T7, made by Annibale di Rossi, of Milan ; 
the case was of pear-tree wood, and beautifully incrusted 
with ivory, ebony, pearl, lapis-lazuli, malachite, and Egyp- 
tian alabaster ; and here also was the curious little German 
finger-organ that formed a portion of the household adorn- 
ments of the great ecclesiastical reformer of the sixteenth 
century, Martin Luther. But I cannot recapitulate all I 
have enjoyed of Raphael's cartoons, and precious stones, 
and intaglios, pearls of vast size, and various colors, the 
historical " Mexican Sun Opal," and marvellous specimens 
of amber, containing fish and lizards, and numerous 
agates, bearing miraculous representations of the human 
face. 

Here the devotee of ceramic art ma3'' feast upon the con- 
fections of the centuries. What a banquet has been spread 
to allure him! Pottery of all nations and epoclis. First: 
The jasper vases of Wedgwood, in black, and white, and 

4* 



42 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

blue, and soft green, with white figures en reliefs and the 
majolica by the same artisans, that surpasses all similar 
wares of the present day in modelling and coloring. Then 
Minton stoneware and Minton plaque. I cannot leave this 
chapter before I tell you of a chaste and elegant dinner ^ 
service I have seen of this choice porcelain, on exhibition 
in a window near Pall Mall, opposite Haymarket. It is of 
turquoise blue, soft, yet brilliant in tone, and adorned by 
carefull}^ drawn swans, in shades of mellow gra3^ and white, 
wadino- amono^ the lono- lush oriass. Attendino^ this service 
were a pair of figures about two feet high, of the same ex- 
quisite make and hues, roijresenting a lady and gentleman 
of the Court of Louis XYI. Whenever I pass this cyno- 
sure, I endeavor to distract m3' attention by an}^ object in 
an opjiosite direction, but the magnet conquei's, and when 
I <zaze I am enthralled ; it is so temptingly beautiful. 
Twice I have ventured into the sanctuary to price and prey 
npon it; and as I look and linger, two fiends tear at my 
heart, as they did at good Launcelot Gobbo's; mine are the 
fiends of a luxurious desire, and a scant}'' purse. The fiend 
— desire — is at mine elbow, and tempts me, sa3nng, "take 
it, gratify your taste." "No," says my meagre enemy on 
my right, "take heed, honest lady, take heed ; scorn such 
frivolities." Then courageous desire saj^s, " Rouse up, be 
of brave and positive mind." Then, replies the slim and 
hungry opponent, "My honest friend, you are an honest 
woman's child; beware!" Then flattering desire says, 
" Imagine it upon your table at home, the beaut}' enhanced, 
when in combination with fine linen, pure crystals of spark- 
ling wines, shining silver, laden with luscious fruits, seen 
through the glow of colored lights; how prett}^ the little 
French lady will be on the etagere^ when not called to the 
dinner-table." And I am about to yield, when the other 
voice whispers, "Caution, prudence, go yonr wa}' !" and I 
go ! Through sheer madness, I " run away with my heels" 
as Gobbo did. But the Minton porcelain of pale blue with 
its white swans haunts me nevertheless. 

Further on are specimens of jewelled Copeland and 
Sevres, Henri Deux and Palissy, and many worthy adap- 
tations from Majolica, Palissy, and Delia Robbia, produced 
in England. 

The windows of the refreshment- room of the South 
Kensington Museum and the corridor leading to it, are 
combinations of the most beautiful stained-glass fragments 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 43 

I liave ever seen. Much of this same glass has been taken 
from the famous windows of Saint Chapelle in Paris. 

Outside, the building is not stately as our Philadelphia 
Exhibition Hall, although a series of magnificent edifices 
surrounded by twelve acres of ground, the cost of which 
was $300,000. Since the erection of the first structure at 
$*75,000, a group has been added. This section of opulent 
London is intersected by miles of massive and forbidding 
mansions. Within these lordly palaces there are light, and 
w^armth, and hospitality, sweet women, and sweeter chil- 
dren ; but the outer face is lifeless and dreary, and I soon 
learned how few of these favored classes walk the streets. 
They are like precious jewels closed in a casket, to be seen 
only on special occasions. They saunter in their own 
grounds, and when they venture beyond those limits, are 
always in costly carriages. 



LE TTER Yin. 

"His faith and works, like streams that intermingle, 
In the same channel ran ; 
The crystal clearness of an eye kept single 
Shamed all tlie frauds of man." 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 

" No dear mother ever upon me smiled — 

Why is it, I wonder, that I'm nobody's child." 

Philo H. Child. 

London, February, 1878. 

I WAS greatly interested in the accounts that floated to 
America of Dean Stanley's welcome to General Grant, 
when the ex-President visited Westminster Abbey shortly 
after his arrival in London last July. How the gray old 
cathedral was suffocatingly crowded ; how all the Ameri- 
cans and thousands of the English were present to tender 
kind salutations to the unostentatious hero ; and how the 
Dean at the close of his sermon addressed the great soldier 
directly. Such an honor was indeed a novelty ; it is the 
dead, and not the living, who are glorified in Westminster, 
and the venerable scholar and ecclesiast is not in the habit 
of praising men in power. I heard him speak a few days 



44 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

ago, but was not near enough to catch his tones nor to 
gather in his thoughts, and had, therefore, formed no 
opinion of him until after my social call at his home in 
the ancient monastery yesterda3^ 

In one of the drearj'- and crumbling traverses of the 
abbey we found a door leading to the Dean's private 
chambers. By a huge brass knocker we made our pres- 
ence known, which was speedily answered by a youthful 
servant. I feared we would not be granted an audience, 
knowing so well how heavily he is pressed by other duties, 
from which there is no escape. The charge of the great 
Abbey is in itself an exacting task, and then the visitors, 
the religious bodies, and his literary exertions, are so many 
constant claims upon his time. A member of Parliament, 
who had for many years resided in the United States, 
accompanied me, and, upon the presentation of his name, 
we were graciously received. The room we first entered, 
and where we waited during the absence of the messenger, 
was rigidly plain; it presented a rather gloom}- aspect, and 
here and there were placed old religious relics, including 
aged Bibles, High-Church books, and pictures. Wiiile 
absorbed in the contem[)lation of these curious ornaments, 
we were summoned to tiie Dean's study. We passed 
through many corridors, and up several spacious stair- 
ways of polished walnut and oak. A glad, familiar sight 
met me in the antechamber; these were Rogers's statuettes, 
"Coming to the Parson's," and "Rip Van Winkle." I 
knew that the Dean was partial to America, and had fre- 
quently invited American clergy to preach from his pulpit, 
but this manifest inclination to American art was a welcome 
to his fireside. The study was a large square apartment, 
liomelike and luxurious. All the appointments were rich, 
and darli, and handsome. A vast Oriental rug covered the 
room almost entirely, exposing only a margin of the pol- 
ished walnut floor. Bookcases extended along the sides, 
containing the congenial companions of the amiable church- 
man. On the wall were some portraits of nobility and 
clerg3^, by Kneller, Lawrence, Reynolds, etc. The mantel 
was large, a massive carving of walnut and oak, and in 
the grate a genial fire was leaping; in its glow stood 
the old Dean of Westminster. My first impression was : 
what a large hearth and what a shrunken little man! 
His greeting was kind, but undemonstrative. He bade us 
be seated while he remained standing, as we had found 
him, throughout our entire visit. He is of the Cassius 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 45 

tj'pe, "lean and hungry, he thinks too much," and with a 
scholar-like air. He has very little conversation, and 
appears to be absorbed by far-away tiioughts. He seemed 
to wait for us to introduce subjects of discussion, and his 
remarks were invariabl}^ polite and laconic. He made a 
few inquiries about America, and then relapsed into utter 
silence. When a question was directed to him he seemed 
to rouse from his distraction in a nervous, epileptic way, 
and after several moments' hesitancy and deliberation, as 
if searching through his mind for an exact reply, answered 
simply, intelligently, and deliberately. An English lady 
had told me that no marriage was valid solemnized after 
twelve o'clock, noon, according to the Establislied Church 
of England. This statement seemed incredible to me in 
view, of the fact that marriages take place at every hour of 
the day and night in the United States. I felt quite sure 
she was jesting with a stranger to English laws, or that she 
had been misinformed, so I carried the case to Dean 
Stanlej^ himself. He assured me that what my friend had 
told me was correct. All marriages, according to the 
canonical law of the High Church, are null and void after 
noon, unless by special license from the Right Honorable 
and Most Reverend Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop 
of Canterbury, and that is only granted in extreme cases. 

Arthur Penrhyn Stanlc}^ is a son of the late Bishop 
Edward, and nephew of the first Baron Stanlej' of Alderly, 
where the Dean was born December 13, 1815. He w^as a 
favorite pupil of the eminent English historian. Dr. Thomas 
Arnold, wiiile the latter was head master at Rugby School. 
When he was only nineteen he gained a scholarship at Baliol 
College, Oxford, and at twenty -two he gained the Newdi- 
gate prize for his English poem, "The Gypsies." After 
many years of admirable official migration, when he was 
fort^'-seven, he married Lady Augusta Bruce, daughter of 
Lord Elgin ; slie was the Queen's most intimate friend, and 
acted as one of her ladies-in-waiting until her death in 
1876. The Dean is still very near to her Majesty, although 
not a member of the Tory party. He holds a powerful 
hand in public affairs, and is much beloved by the English. 
On the Sabbath I heard him speak I noticed many ladies 
sending messages and cards to his apartments after he had 
retired. 

Accustomed to hear of extravagant salaries to clergy- 
men at home, I made some inquiry of one of the chapter 
clerks at Westminster, and learned, that while Dean Stanley 



46 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

receives only £-2000, or $10,000 a year, Archbishop Tait, 
the Primate of all England, is paid $75,000; the Archbishop 
of York, $f)0,000; the Bishop of London, $50,000; the 
Bishop of Durham, $40,000; the Bishop of Winchester, 
$35,000; and the Bishop of Bangor, $21,000. There are 
twenty-six other bishops whose salaries are from twenty to 
twenty-five thousand dollars per annum, and all this great 
aristocracy supported by still other bishops, deans, deacons, 
and archdeacons, secretaries, clerks, and innumerable minor 
dignitaries, some of whom are paid as high as fifteen, ten, 
and five thousand dollars each, for attending to their relig- 
ious duties. Of course, this great establishment is a puzzling 
problem to an American woman, but in contrast with our 
republican system in America, it seems a monstrous out- 
lay of money when added to other expenses, to pay for the 
Established Church. 

I had heard much of the singularly fresh and brilliant 
style of Canon Farrar, one of the Dean's assistants, and 
desired to see the new celebrity. Last evening he spoke in 
the Church of St. Andrew's, corner of St. Andrew's Street, 
Holborn Viaduct, and I am obliged to confess T was dis- 
appointed, alike in his thoughts and diction. His text, 
" Modern Martyrs," vvas one capable of marvellous elabo- 
ration, yet he seemed to fail in its treatment. His manner 
is somewhat graceful, but he lacks fire. He has a soft 
dulcet English voice, but it has none of the clear and elec- 
tric American ring. Much of his seiinon was inaudible, 
although the church was filled. The English make a demi- 
god of a clergyman who is not comparable to numbers of 
our ministers who really enjo}^ no special celebrity, barring 
the Reverend Beecher, for whom I entertain the utmost 
admiration, not as a divine creation, but as an orator, a 
statesman, a philosopher, and a thinker ; it is the subtle 
eloquence in which he clothes his ideas, that thrilled my 
whole being when I first listened to him. 

Last Sunday I attended holy service in the chapel at- 
tached to the Foundling Hospital in Guilford Street, 
Bloomsbur}'^ Square. It is one of the objects that never 
fail to interest the stranger, and is as full of novelty to the 
Englishman, for the very natural reason, that it has been 
the depository for armies of anonymous English children. 
And 1 enjoyed it for the other reason, that I had ever felt 
anxious to see how such institutions are managed. Until 
after I had made this visit and became interested in these 
homes for the little unfortunates, I had formed no concep- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 47 

tion of the statistics of these European establishments. 
The foundling hospital in Rome has the capacity of retain- 
ing 3000 little ones, and one in Naples receives 1900 
annually at the turning-box at the door ; every foundling 
has a number fastened about its neck to aid its future recog- 
nition. The hospital in Florence grants to the girls a dowry 
of 235 francs on the event of their marriage, and from 1855 
to 1865, 1403 girls received this reward. From 1863 to 
1866, the Italian hospital received 33,222 children. Eighty- 
three of these institutions exist in Italy alone. The statis- 
tics of the Russian system are appalling. In the year 1864, 
there were 6181 foundlings in the St. Petersburg institu- 
tion, and from 1862 to 1864, 35,38Y were admitted to the 
one in Moscow. Those of Vienna received 54,4*78 infants, 
from 1863 to 1868. Both ancient Greece and Rome were 
furnished with these establishments, and in Athens the 
forsaken children were exposed in a pillar placed in the 
public market. 

Old Captain Coram, founder of the London Foundling 
Asylum, was a seafaring man who, several centuries ago, 
donated to the city fifty-six acres, which has now so in- 
creased in value, as to be covered by great squares and 
flower-gardens, and handsome houses ; and thus this hos- 
pital stands in one of the most beautiful districts of the 
gra}'' metropolis. Over 500 outcasts, girls and boys, from 
mere infancy to the age of fifteen years, joined in the service 
of the churcii, and I afterwards saw them at their dinners 
in the long well lighted hall. The children must all be ille- 
gitimate, and the mother is not permitted to visit her little 
one after placing it here, unless she mingles in the throng 
of visitors on Sunday. After it has received the pre- 
scribed amount of education and is about to be apprenticed 
out, then she has a right to claim it. In the building are 
preserved cases of trinkets, cards and other mementos found 
on the waifs, as thej^are deix)sited with the keeper. Nothing 
could have been more beautiful than the day I visited this 
imposing spectacle. Some of Hogarth's most valuable pro- 
ductions, who was a great benefactor to this charity, adorn 
the walls, and several fine statues are preserved in memory 
of Captain Coram and his worthy successors. 



48 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER IX. 



"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
Await alike the inevitable hour: — 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

Gray. 

"Among mankind we are all born alike 
Of father and mother. None excels 
Another in his nature, but the fate 
Of evil chance holds some of us, and some 
Good fortune favors, and necessity 
Holds some in bondage." 

Sophocles. 

London, March, 1878. 

I HAVE ever regarded the study of heraldry the height of 
folly, and while many of my friends love to dilate on the 
subject, 1 prefer to study something more useful. 1 never 
had any time to give to that prodigious mass of conceit, 
" Burke's Peerage." What has an American lady to do with 
armorial bearings, descents, precedence, ceremonies, and 
processions? Unlike some Pinchbeck patrician sisters, I 
never had the slightest inclination to purchase from my 
stationer a counterfeit crest, nor to shield my shortcomings 
by a blazonry of borrowed dignity or genealogy. The am- 
bition of every American should be to merit a title of real 
nobility, then may he proudly wear it. 

I passed yesterday morning in the Herald's College, 
Benet's Hill, Doctors' Commons, and became interested so 
much in the science as to feel authorized to disprov^e the 
axiom of the men, that women are always attracted by 
gewgaws, and I reproach ray sex for being too ready to 
yield to the accusation. I hope those who may visit the 
College of Arms and converse with Mr. Stephen L Tucker, 
the Rouge Croix pursuivant, will not freely give way here- 
after. This institution is a huge monument of the vanity 
of men. Not that my sex are not fond of the signs of blue 
blood and ancient ancestry, but it is invariably the male 
who originates and carries these empty honors; the female 
is only the reflection of the lords of creation, save indeed, 
when she is mistress, like Queen Victoria. Yet I learned 
from one of the friends of tlie Lord Chamberlain, that even 
Her Majesty obeys the mandates of her ministers in her 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 49 

rules of court and in the choice of the ladies of her house- 
hold. 

While Mr. Tucker was showing ns tlirough this recepta- 
cle of the parchraented and veliumed title-deeds of the 
British nobilit3'^, he related some amusing stories of the 
numberless communications tiiey receive from persons 
craving information as to their relationship with the old 
families. Frequently Americans are sure a vast fortune is 
soon to be theirs on account of their claimed connection 
with one of these ancient houses, and there are also num- 
bers of such expectants in England. The Herald's College 
is often pestered by these waiters upon fortune, who some- 
times lose their wits in the wild search for riches that never 
come. In America we have no sucli institution as the 
" Herald's College," and yet many of our people are con- 
stantly sighing for borrowed robes. Neither have I any 
respect for those who would den}' their ancestors, forget- 
ting, like the ostrich that hides its head as the storm ap- 
pr.oaches, tliat what they hope to conceal is only made more 
public by their struggles. And those who exist in and on 
their grandparents, are still more worthy of contempt, for 
they are brave in feathers not their own ; to me it seems 
equally absurd to blush for, or to boastof one's forefathers. 
Still the "Herald's rollege" was interesting and novel, for 
here I saw for the first time the value of mere titles and 
tassels. The apparent fact is that virtue and worth are too 
rarel}^ recognized. The original merit may be virtue, worth, 
bravery, benevolence, but the sin and shame of the whole 
system is, that the most worthless inherits the most worthy, 
and, far worse, the vices of the last heir are always con- 
doned by the glorious deeds of his progenitor a thousand 
years ago. 

Mr. Tucker, sensible and practical as he is, showed us 
tlie collective autographs, rolls, missals, and archives of 
the great English houses for many centuries, but did not 
make an argument for tliem. These reminiscences at first 
aroused my pity, such pit}' as I iiad often felt for a dear 
friend who was making a dunce of himself, till I saw how 
all the English bow down before these relics, how they 
worship a lord or a lady, a duke or a duchess, and how 
(naturally enough) the be-praised families accept the adu- 
lation, as if they had earned it. So it was not for me to 
attempt a reformation, nor to condemn the English nobility 
if the}' become fools like their parasites. 

The "Herald's College" was founded by Richard III. in 
5 



50 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

1484. The chief is the Diike of Norfolk, one of the leading 
Catholic peers, and the office is an heirloom of his house. 
There are three kings of arms, six heralds, and four pur- 
suivants. These officers attend on court occasions in 
royal costume. The scarlet coat embroidered with gold, 
and gold buttons, cocked hat, and pantaloons with broad 
gold stripe, and a small sword, gave to handsome Stephen 
I. Tucker the appearance of a masonic knight. It was a 
sort of theatrical uniform, or holiday fancy-dress, and as I 
write I feel quite sure my gracious friend will charge my 
criticism to m}' democratic rearing. I presume I was ob- 
tuse, but it was a long time before I could comprehend 
tliat the objects of the " Herald's College" were to preserve 
all the pedigrees of the British nobility and gentry", the 
records of royal coronations, marriages, christenings, fune- 
rals, visits of kings and princes, also official reports of 
cavalcades, processions, tournaments, and combats. The 
royal funerals alone fill sixty-five folio volumes. The im- 
mense libraries are crowded with books, portraits, and en- 
gravings, to preserve veneration for rank among the people. 
These documents and records are very often necessary to 
settle questions of title to lands, but the general object is 
to keep alive respect for aristocratic forms. I was much 
impressed b\' this regard for old customs. At home almost 
ever}^ famih' has peculiar habits, generally hard enough to 
explain to strangers, or to justify to ourselves, and this is 
the case in London. I was shown an account of Sir Ger- 
vase Clifton, who had been a widower six times; also a 
volume, the work of a monk of the 14th century, "The 
Pedigree from Adam to the Saxon Kings." He tells us 
alter "Adam had lived 930 years he died of the gout." 
Lad}^ Juliana Berners sa3's that "Adam was a gentleman," 
and in one sense she does not transcend the bounds of 
reason. But when John Guillim, the rouge croix pursui- 
vant of the 17th century, ascribes coat-armor to the tribes 
of Israel, I think he has allowed his imagination rather 
free play. Mr. Tucker's ancestor and namesake, Stephen 
Tucker, was licensed by Henry YIII., July 2, 1519, " to 
use and wear his bonnet upon his head, as well in our pre- 
sence as elsewhere, at his liberties." The great mass of 
books, papers, and vellums, wei'e kept in perfect order, and 
as they relate to thousands, and are frequently consulted, 
their preservation requires a prodigious outlay of money. 
The Queen appoints all the heralds, and their homes are in 
the college. Mr. Tucker presented us to his charming 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 51 

family, and when I left I felt that the winter day had been 
profitably passed, though I was unsatisfied; having tasted 
of this enigmatical science, I hungered for still further 
knowledge. 

The mysteries of coats-of-arms are indeed curious. The 
precious stones, topaz, pearls, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, 
amethysts, and diamonds, are in constant use, each em- 
blematic ; also the colors, red, yellow, blue, white, orange, 
purple, and black; and the planets, sun, moon, stars, Jupi- 
ter, Venus, Mercury, and Saturn. How soon we learn that 
the precious stones are for nobility, the planets for princes, 
the various colors for higher or lower degrees; which is 
the dexter and which the sinister side of the field; and 
thus we are able to read the hieroglyphics of heraldic bear- 
ings by the effigies of men, women, and children, beasts, 
fruits, and flowers. Lions gardant, saliant, couchant, dor- 
mant, and passant, seem to haA^e been one of the earliest 
charges ; we see them on the shields of the great houses of 
Northumberland, Cadogan, North, Westminster, Fitzham- 
mond. The meaning of such charges as fleur-de-lis, clarion, 
and the fylfot is obscure; they are, therefore, called doubt- 
ful. Learned scholars do not hesitate to devote themselves 
to this study, as if it had a visible use other than to keep 
alive form, degree, obedience, and reverence among men. 
The struggle for precedence amused me. Every rank has 
its place, and none dares to precede his superiors. Ridicu- 
lous anecdotes are afloat of the disputes of men, but the 
gossips say that ladies are far more severe and particular, 
especially those of ancient family. Serious dissensions 
occur, and the royal households are not exceptions to 
bursts of feminine temper. The Queen, Princess of Wales, 
princesses, duchesses, the wives of kings, or brothers of 
the Queen, daughters of the Queen, come first, and then 
the other grades of nobility, down to the wives of clergy- 
men, and lawyers, and burgesses; but there is no place 
for the consorts of tradesmen or mechanics, and those of 
scientists, artists, and scholars are excluded. The clergy 
and lawyers come last on the roster. 

The titled families take not only the precedence, but 
absorb most of the offices and attentions of the court. An 
American now and then engineers herself into the charmed 
circle, but it is paid for by much intrigue and humiliation; 
and after her object is accomplished, she is discussed and 
cauA'^assed disparagingly by the British sisterhood. 

Since I have been in London, incidents have come to 



52 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

rny knowledoe by which I am taught social caste is as 
strong in England as it ever was; and I am sorry to add 
that those who cannot boast a coat-of-arms of their own, 
nor a long lineage, are generally too anxious to enjoj^ the 
patronage of their more fortunate fellow-creatures. 



LETTER X. 

"Home of the Grosvenor's high-born race, 

Home of their beautiful and brave, 
Alike their birth — and burial-place, 

Their cradle and their grave ! 
Still sternly o'er the castle -gate 
Tlieir house's Lion stands in state. 

As in Ills proud, departed hours, 
And warriors frown in stone on high, 
And feudal banners ' flout the sky,' 

Above his princely towers." 

Fitz-Green Halleck, amended. 



" A world of busy workers, "who nobly toil 
The greater world to clothe and charm. 
Men who take vast wealth from sky and soil. 
Coin gems for ornaments, and guns to harm. 
Such is this glowing City — such this home 
Of modern art, a new and dazzling Rome, 
Where labor rules supremest king. 
And bright inventions choicest offerings bring." 

Anonymous, 

Birmingham, March, 1878. 

It was a da3M'eryIike onr Indian summer as we strolled 
through the famous town of Chester, in Cheshire ; passing- 
through the old cit}^ gates, lingering in our walk upon the 
original Roman walls, and upon the antique and tottering 
bridges that span the Dee, and pausing to feast our eyes 
upon the exquisite specimens of pottery in the shops hidden 
under the vowh^ as tliey aie called here — roofed galleries ex- 
tending along the sidewalk, where pedestrians may siiop, 
protected from the rain when the weather is inclement. 
I enjoyed these novelties under the kind guideship of 
General Lucius Fairchild, American Consul at Liverpool. 
He lives so near the ancient seat, and lias so many friends 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 53 

in the vicinity, that, as well as having the pleasure of his 
genial society we garnered much information from his in- 
telligent descriptions of the interesting and picturesque 
country around us. 

Chester has become almost an American town; not in 
its inhabitants nor its customs, but because it is largely ^ 
visited by our country people, and is also the central point 
for an immense amount of English traffic and travel. A -^ 
flood of overpowering historical recollections enveloped me 
as I paused to think and gaze upon the busy town upon 
the high road between London and Ireland ; it is the very 
spot upon which to draw comparisons between the old, old 
times and the new ones. The Romans were here with the 
twentieth legion in A. D. 60, and many descriptions of 
ancient relics are found at this day, speaking loudly of the 
early possessors. Old as Chester is, it is very clean and 
very much improved, although there is a visible effort to 
hold on to the vestiges of the original Roman occupation. 
Here, indeed, was the archetype of the man\' pictures I 
had seen of English towns. The narrow lanes, low, red- 
tiled roofs, spotless dimity curtains stretched across the 
lower window panes, rows of earthen flower-pots and little 
green plants, gave to it a provincial air. 

The books that have been written about this one town 
would fill a respectable library, especially those by Amer- 
icans. I will not loiter upon the old, footbeaten path, but 
try to preserve some idea of the famous Eaton Hall, the 
magnificent estate of the Marquis of Westminster, the 
richest peer in England, the owner of a large portion of 
the great murky metropolis, whose income is simply incal- 
culable. The ancestor of this Norman lord was the Earl 
Hugh Lupus, the nephew and favorite of the Norman con- 
queror, who, like many of those ancient chiefs, after living 
til rough years of vice, expiated his sins by constructing 
the Abbey of St. Warburg, from which the old cathedral, 
within a few years splendidly improved, may claim its 
origin. 

The fair and opulent demesne on which Eaton Hall 
stands, is over sixteen miles in length, and some seven miles 
broad, nearly as vast as the entire city of Philadelphia, 
Fairmount Park inclusive, and this is not all ; the mighty 
Marquis of Grosvenor, or Westminster, is the happy pos- 
sessor„of a large part of the city of Chester. W^e drove, 
in our little English wagonette, out to this historic domain, ' 
about three miles from this still more historic town. As 

5* 



# 



54 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

we approached, the great iron gate supported b}'^ the stone 
portals of the outer lodge, was swung back upon its creak- 
ing, rusty hinges, by the keeper's daughter, a little ruddy- 
faced English girl in a crimson dress, who dropped us a 
courtes}'^, and cast upon us a coy glance from under iier 
lashes, that meant pennies. We drove for miles through 

Yj long avenues, skirted by huge oaks and firs. Although 
much of the grounds are under cultivation, there are vast 
sections devoted to tiie ornamental, and to large herds of 
deer, — that were grazing by thousands, — not for human 
consumption, but simply for the sport of the noble Marquis 
and his titled guests. We obtained a glimpse of the costly 
castle ; of the hall 450 feet long, in which the Marquis re- 
sides when at home, of a floor 40 feet square, that cost 
$8000, of the great corridor extending 500 feet, of the spa- 
cious drawing-room, with the ceiling of heraldic shields, 
and honeycombed in tracery of cream color and gold, the 
walls rich in their treasures of art, by Rubens and West, 
of the still more spacious library, with its colonnades of 
pillars on either side, and heavy gothic windows, and oaken 
shelves, overladen with the rarest books. The grand 
stairway is a prodigy ; two colored marble Eg3q:)tian stat- 
ues stand on either hand as you ascend the long flight of 
steps, which run from the centre right and left to the second 
gallery, and thence to the private apartments on the higher 
story. Land and sea have been ransacked for gems to 
adorn this luxurious pile. Here are inclosed precious 
articles of viiHu^ paintings, statuary, mosaics, and frescoes. 
During the hunting season this nobleman entertains many 
hundred guests, and his tenantry alone are from five to 
seven hundred. The whole edifice, exclusive of stables 
and out-buildings, covers a space of 700 feet in front. 

A 1600 guineas were expended upon the pavement of the 
main floor. 

Tapestries, damasks, shields, vases, chandeliers, and 
a world of precious treasures of art, have been purchased 
and placed in the interior,-vvhile outside you are enchanted 
with fountains, vistas, Italian gardens, long walks, and 
endless arrangements for the enjoyment of those who pre- 
fer the chase, or the drive, or the pleasures of the angler. 
Apart from the historic pieces, and portraits, and old 
armor, is a choice collection of racing pictures, illustrative 
of the fabulous sums of money that have been squandered 
on blooded horses by the luxurious Grosvenors. The por- 
traits of the animals belonging to this family for more than 



0|' FOREIGN TRAVEL. 55 

a hundred years occupy a prominent place in tbe house- 
hold. This house of Westminster, or Grosvenor, has been 
collecting wealtii and adding to all its territory since the 
Norman invasion. I was enraptured by the gardens and 
conservatories, which, though it was early spring, were 
filled with every variety of exotic shrub and flower, in- 
cluding exquisite pieces of native growth, making alto- 
gether a bewildering multitude of color and a weight of 
odor thot recalled the simile of the poet when he speaks of 
the rose dying of aromatic pain. 

As I entered the central avenue, I was greeted by a 
vision of entrancing beauty. The floral-fretted walls ex- 
tended and gradually contracted in the far perspective ; 
from the lofty and vaulted glass roof hung the delicate 
sprays of a vine bearing tiny crimson stars that had clus- 
tered and wreathed their tendrils into a network and fringe 
overhead. Far, far down this gallery, the eff"ect was that 
of a cloud of sea-foam in mid-air, tinged by the lurid glow 
of the sinking sun. It was a poem of radiance and per- 
fume from the breath of heaven. Then there were the 
scarlet and pink and white lilies, the sweet modest violets, 
the cold chaste bridal-wreaths, the lusty velvet roses, and 
the bronzed and glossy margins of box; and you may be 
quite sure I did not quit this Eden till I had secured fra- 
grant trophies of my memorable visit. 

The old racecourse, where the Chester cup is annually 
run for, has a history of its own, and there is no finer 
English scene than the struggle for this cup in May. In 
1540 a custom began, by which a silver bell, costing 3s. 6c?., 
was annually given by the saddler's company "to him who 
shall run the best on horseback." This arrangement was 
subsequently changed, and it was decreed tliat that "horse 
which with speed did overrun the rest, had the best cup 
then presently delivered, and that horse which came sec- 
ond, next the first, before the rest, had the second cup then 
also delivered." 

Cheshire, in which Chester is placed, is perhaps the rich- 
est county in England in old houses; many of the churches 
are very beautiful, and it is noted for the number of its 
aristocracy and wealthy proprietors ; but among its old 
estates you will find few, indeed none, as extensive as 
Eaton Hall. The country is so gridironed with railroads, 
that with its limited territory you pass from one place to 
another without the slightest difficulty. So bidding adieu 
to our friend. General Fairchild, we passed into Warwick- 



56 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

shire, and found ourselves at The Great Western Hotel, 
Birmingham, a few hours after leaving Chester. Warwick- 
shire is one of the wealthiest territories in the world, and 
Birmingham the largest manufacturing town in England, 
and is claimed without an equal in any other country. 
Far different from Liverpool, brighter, cleaner, and more 
intelligent, it is called "the toy-shop of Europe," from the 
number and varietj' of its manufactures. I had no time 
to stop to examine the churches and sliops, theatres and 
cemeteries, and so hired a hack and a guide, and made a 
rather close survey of the manufactories, all of them very 
curious and interesting to me. It is the great headquar- 
ters of buttons; buttons of brass, copper, cloth, shell, bone, 
wood, and porcelain. The gilt buttons for militar}' and 
other uniforms employ thousands of persons ; millions of 
cloth buttons are sold annually, also linen buttons, hooks 
and eyes, and pearl and bone buttons. Swords and guns 
and pistols are made in immense quantities in Birmingham. 
The gold and silver plate in jewelry trade is very large. 
30,000 wedding rings annually pass through the assay 
office. 70 ounces of gold leaf are used every week, and 
150,000 ounces of silver are used annually. I was com- 
pletely astounded by the manufacture of brasses and 
bronzes. The Birmingham workers in iron are renowned 
all over the world. The glass manufacturers, and the 
manufacturers of steel pens are also very interesting; they 
claim that Birmingham supplies the world with pens. 

We drove through Aston Park, b^^ the sweet waters of 
the Rea, along the eastern slopes of the undulating hills of 
red sandstone, and into the suburbs as far as Stafford and 
Worcester. The new court of assizes, that is in course of 
erection, is quite as large and as handsome a building as 
our new post-office promises to be; the town cannot claim 
half the population of Philadelphia, including that portion 
beyond city limits. 

Opposite m^^ window is one of the beautiful arcades or 
galleries of shops that one finds all over Eumpe ; and after 
the lamps were lighted I sauntered through it to note the 
diversity of fancy articles of native manufacture that em- 
bellished the windows. A pleasant place to pass half an 
hour; a clean walk, a glass roof, brilliant goods displayed, 
and it seemed to be a general rendezvous for luxurious 
idlers. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 51 



LETTER XI. 

*'Tbon soft flowing Avon, by thy silver stream. 
Of things more than mortal sweet Shakespeare would dream ; 
The fairies by moonlight dance round his green bed, 
For hallow'd the turf is which pillow'd his head." 

Garrick. 

Stratford-on-Avon, March, 1878. ' 

A RIDE of about half an hour on the rails brought us into 
this quaint old town of the myriad-minded poet. The 
atmosphere was salubrious and hazy when we quitted 
Birmingham, and the blue glamour of the long English 
twiliohts was weavino; itself around the horizon. Of the 
beautiful section of Warwickshire through which our route 
lay, I saw little; the glimpses I caught of the rich farms, 
luxuriant valley's, and gentle-flowing streams, were not sat- 
isfactory through the obscuring mists. When we drew up 
in the little station in Stratford-on-Avon, only twenty -six 
miles distant, we were greeted by "an eager and a nipping 
air" and a driving shower of hail. A rickety omnibus con- 
veyed us to the Shakespeare House, where the chambers 
are designated by titles from the immortal plays, one over 
each door. As you enter the hall there are tables and 
escritoires of the heavy English style, a bust of Shake- 
speare, and memorial engravings. Over the dining-room I 
noticed the appropriate quotation, "may good digestion 
wait on appetite." I was assigned the apartment bearing 
the inscription, "Midsummer Night's Dream." I could 
attach no point to this motto on which to hang a vision. I 
onl}' knew that it was a large room containing three beds, 
the walls in a state of utter dilapidation, and the windows, 
illy fitted to their frames, were shaken all through tlie night 
by the wind, while the hail pattered violently against the 
glass. These circumstances did not inspire the delightful 
sensations suggested by the title. The bridal-chamber is 
labelled "Love's Labor's Lost," the same that had been 
occupied by Olive Logan several months ago when she 
passed through Stratford. Has this most incongruous pre- 
fix been inadvertently placed here, or is it the work of some 
melancholy pessimist ? 

On the second floor of this little hotel are some valuable 
old paintings by Rembrandt, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
early artists of equal celebrity; and the original sign-board 
of the inn, bearing a dim and defaced effigy of Shakespeare 



58 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

The proprietor's wife, an Englishwoman of considerable 
education, was excessively hospitable, and after chatting 
about her collection of pictures, the ancient house, and the 
strange maxims that arrest your gaze at every step, she 
spoke of my obvious state of poor health, and offered her 
tender care and an alleviation, if not a remedy, for my suf- 
ferings while 1 remained her giiest. She left me, and a 
quarter of an hour afterward a maid appeared with a bowl 
of what I supposed to be farina gruel and a small vial of a 
brownish hue, of which she cautioned me, to let the dose 
be meagre; this warning might have been omitted, as there 
was but one remaining drop; still the w^ords created un- 
pleasant suspicions in my husband's mind, who endeavored 
to dissuade my imbibing the ominous potion. Despite 
the entreaties, I took it ; I felt that m}'' sands of life were 
rapidly drifting out into the great ocean of eternity ; the 
ruthless winds were shifting the leaves of my brief book 
of life, to the page where only one word, finis^ was written ; 
and so the offered sympathy I accepted ; but let my expe- 
rience serve as a watchword to my American sisters ; the 
following evening I found my landlady's pap and charity 
put in the bill, after I had praised her as a model ! Beware 
of the sympathetic English proprietress; this is the second 
one who has charged for benevolence. " The best in this 
kind are but shadows ; and the w^orst are no worse, if ima- 
gination amend them." 

M}'^ first visit was not to the house where he who became 
Lord Paramount in English literature opened his eyes upon 
Ihe light of this world, but to New Place, the home of his 
ripened genius and industry, where he waited the too early 
summons of the grim and bribeless reaper. Of his ancient 
sanctum there remain only a few foundation stones. But 
here lived and labored the poet ; here were his garden, his 
favorite mulberry tree, his shady walks, and his lawn and 
orchard stretching down to the margin of the silvery Avon. 
The morning succeeding the hailstorm was dismal and wet, 
but the turf in the Shakspeare garden was fresh and green, 
and the gravel-paths firm beneath our feet. These gardens 
are cultivated and embellished with beautiful flowers, and 
in the summer season are open for public enjoyment. By 
special arrangement they may be procured for picnics and 
other occasions of merr3^-making. 

In the house attached to New Place, where resides the 
ancient and interesting warden of the illustrious poet's 
devastated home, are many silent but eloquent relics of his 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 59 

life and surroundings ; a rude clay cast of the " bard of 
Avon," and a portrait, as also portraits of the noble line 
of Cloptons and Coombes, whose fair daughter, if my 
memory rightly serves me, was consigned to a living tomb, 
and the fact is generally believed to have been the incentive 
to the melancholy tragedy, " Romeo and Juliet." 

We approached Trinity Chapel through a path skirted 
by tall limes, whose interlacing branches form a shelter 
overhead, where the cold glimmer of white tombstones is 
faintly seen through the rank grass, where the sweetly 
flowing Avon winds like a silken ribbon about the base of 
the crumbling and ivy-crowned house of God, whose gentle 
murmur is a dulcet accompaniment to the whistling of the 
wind among the almost leafless branches. As we waited 
for the sexton, I noticed a sad-faced woman and child 
planting flowers around a little grave that had been newly 
made, and then we passed from the yet untrodden earth of 
a spring-time burial, into the centuried sanctuary of the 
immortal dust. 

On the left side of the chancel, as you face the altar, is 
the grave bearing the well-known- inscription : — 

Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare, 
To digg the dust encloased liere ; 
Bleste be y® man y*- spares these stones, 
And curst be he y* moves my bones. 

Printed fac-similes of these characteristic lines of the 
" poet of the world" are for sale at a shilling each; but by 
ottering a bribe of another shilling, I became the possessor 
of the identical one upon the tomb. From the entablature 
just above, the florid and bedizened effigy of sweet Wil- 
liam, in scarlet doublet and sleeveless black gown, looked 
down upon the sacrilegious barter over his dry and Whited 
bones. And then we were requested to contribute to the 
beautiful new memorial window that is [)laced very near 
Shakespeare's tomb, and is paid for from American bounty; 
it is of exquisite stained glass, and represents the " seven 
ages," applied to the Bible ; four of the panels are already 
completed. After lingering in the aisles and naves of the 
old Gothic structure, we turned to the birthplace of the 
modest wool-comber's poet child. Here everything is red- 
olent of Shakespeare, and the phantom that I had enter- 
tained of Shakes[)eare being made of diff"erent cla}^, and 
cast in a diff'erent mould from the rest of humankind, rap- 
idly faded. He had lived so long ago, I so far awny from 



60 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

all that proved his existence, his writings so peerless, his 
imagination so wild and creative, that 1 had sometimes be- 
lieved him a tradition, always divine, but never a myth. I 
delight to find him human, approachable, and lovable. The 
old fireplace, the decayed wails, ceilings, and floors, the 
low-gabled tenement, and the ten treacherous steps that 
ascend from the kitchen to the chamber where he was born, 
all seem hallowed by the " great heir of fame," and then 
I remember that this same house served afterward as a 
butcher-shop and a tavern, impregnated with the odor of 
beer, bad gin, coarse meat, and greasy bacon ; ah! verily, 
"to what base uses may we not return, Horatio?" 

The walls of the chamber are blackened by thousands of 
pencilled names, and Scott and Byron are easily read upon 
the glass window panes. There remain the chairs, the sig- 
net ring, the first copy of some of his plays, and even a 
letter from Richard Quincey, written in 1598, for tlie pur- 
pose of borrowing from the poet thirty pounds, but not one 
line in the hand of Shakespeare. The little garden attaciied 
to the " birthplace" is filled with the flowers so often men- 
tioned in his dramas, and as tiie old lady who conducted 
us over the poetical ground handed them to me, she re- 
peated the lines of poor Ophelia, and those that run, " I 
know a bank whereon the wild tiiyme blows," etc. I found 
Mr. J. 0. Halliwell Philips not only the god of her idol- 
ati-y, but the presiding genius of all Stratford-onAvon ; it 
must be remembered that he purchased over ten years ago 
''New Place," and presented it to the Crown, after putting 
it in splendid order. Occasionally he visits the ancient 
village, and must be, from all accounts, a regular brother 
Cheeryble, judging by the ecstasies of the woman janitor of 
the " l3irth place." Every one about Stratford, with the ex- 
ception of the great families, makes a living out of Shake- 
speare ; were it not for the constant stream of tourists, 
mainly Americans, the old houses and haunts of the idol 
William, the shops, taverns, and churches, would have a 
dismal ex})erience. Everything is placed under a rigid 
system of contribution. The charges are not great, but the 
s^^stem is consistently^ and steadily maintained. 

The great staple product of the vicinage is beer ; indeed, 
the whole neighborhood cultivates the juice of the liop, just 
as all classes drink the tempting brew. The memorial the- 
atre, which seems to have originated from the fund started 
by David Garrick, one hundred and ten years ago, to con- 
struct a statue to Shakespeare, is in rapid course of erec- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 61 

tion, and vvheii completed, will be one of tlie finest in the 
kingdom. It is entirely too large, however, for the town, 
which has a population of not more than 4000. Only on 
rare occasions can it ever be put to profitable use. 



LETTER XII. 

*' He was not of an age, but for all time, 
And all the muses still were in their prime, 
When like Apollo he came for to charm 
Our ears, or like a Mercury to harm." 

Ben Jonson. 

Warwick, England, March, 1878. 

The charm of English life is a residence or sojourn in 
the country during the spring and summer, but as my 
programme carries me on the Continent for the opening 
of the Paris Exposition, I am obliged to improve an Eng- 
lish winter as best I can. The country side of England is 
always lovely, even in March, and the climate is much less 
dismal and inhospitable than that of London. 

Warwickshire, the county in which Stratford is placed, 
has been, from its central situation and physical periphery, 
called the heart of England. It is a little world by itself; 
a world of wealth in mineral and agricultural products, 
a world of learning, of aristocracy, of poetry, romance, 
history, ancient records, and modern progress. The rail- 
way radiates all through the section at exceedingly low 
fares, cab hire is reasonable, and the distances between 
the various show places, village inns, cities, and towns, in 
this particular count}^, are so short, that many travellers, 
when the weather is fine, prefer to walk. A week might 
be spent in Stratford and its vicinity, and you would reap 
a golden harvest of pleasure and information. 

While at the Shakespeare house I heard of many of my 
country people who come there in June or July, and loiter 
around the place sanctified by the great master, his pre- 
decessors, and followers; interesting in their Roman re- 
mains and attractive in recent ancestral homes. The river 
Avon flows through Warwickshire on its way to the Severn ; 
it beautifies and freshens the borders of lovely English 
6 



62 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

abodes, passes smiling, thrifty hamlets, sombre castles, 
irrigates rich farm lands, murmurs at the poet's grave, 
and coils around the old county-towns with their venerable 
cliurches and towers. 

Alcester, seven and a half miles from Stratford, a small 
market town, the seat of a Roman encampment, as proved 
by the discovery of ancient bricks, coins, and urns of 
human bones, is now a modern factory of needles. Alces- 
ter is at the confluence of the streams Arrow and Alne, 
a short distance irom the ancient castles of the Beau- 
champs and Grevilles, two miles from Coughton Manor, 
the home of the ancient family of Tiirockmorton since the 
reign of Henry lY. The same little town is bordered, 
equally distant, on the southwest by Ragley Paik, the 
patrician estate of the Marquis of Hertford, with its castle, 
})ark, lakes, and peerless gardens. Charlecote, four miles 
from Stratford, indissolubl}- associated with Shakespeare, 
is the ancient family seat of the Lucj^s, whose ancestor. 
Sir Thomas Lucy, is said to have bitterly persecuted 
Shakespeare, because the latter, on several occasions, made 
free with the Knight's deer, which favor (?) the poet re- 
turned by attaching immortal and merciless ridicule to 
him as Justice Shalloio. The old homestead is of brick in 
the Elizabethan style, the great hall wainscoted in oak, 
containing marvels of ancient and richly carved fuiniture, 
and many valuable paintings. Cliarlecote Church, near by, 
was rebuilt by the same family. The Cloptons and Combes, 
families contemporary with Shakespeare, had their estate 
on the Avon, so that the entire vicinage is dotted with 
noble castles and opulent homes. 

Shottery, where Shakespeare wooed — or rather was 
wooed by Anne Hathawa}^, is only a mile from his birth- 
place. There is nothing here to aw^aken pleasant recollec- 
tions, and I was rather glad that some doubts were thrown 
upon its authenticity. P]ven the relics purchased from 
here by Garrick, as sanctified by confederacy with the 
great poet, were most probably the constructive frauds of 
an enterprising auctioneer or collector. 

My visit to Stratford left a sad impression. It is odd 
indeed that there remains nothing satisfactory of Shakes- 
peare's ways of life, either in London, or at his village 
home. There was quite too much surmise and speculation. 
The most living things about him are his plays, and even 
these are doubted b}^ some and openly conceded to others. 
For so great a mind, it is painful how little has been left 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 68 

by himself or found by antiquarians ! Dwelling upon these 
facts, like thousands of others who have preceded me, I 
was cheered by the following lines, that I copied from the 
crumbling walls of Shakespeare's house, written by sweet 
Washington Irving in 1821 — fifty-eight years ago. It is 
the most solacing excuse for Shakespeare's anonymous 
character I have seen: — 

**0f mighty Shakespeare's birth the room we see, 
That where he died in vain to find we try ; 
Useless the search — for all immortal he, — 
And those who are immortal never die." 

When we left Stratford the annual cattle fair was at its 
height, and as we passed through the picturesque valley 
of the Avon, we saw vast herds of choice grades in pad- 
docks for exhibition. There were the short-horned Durham 
breed, the Herefords, that are valuable as working oxen, 
the Devon s, famed for their beaut^'^, the Ayrshires prized 
for the quantity of milk they yield, and the Alderneys 
whose EXTRACT is world renowned for richness. I have 
good reason never to forget the latter breed, and when my 
experience recurs to ray mind I do not contemplate this 
particular stock with much satisfaction. Several weeks 
ago my London physician advised me to drink English 
stout, ciiampagne or cream. The first was less palatable 
tlian any drug he could have prescribed, the second too 
costly, and as I was forbidden still wines I was reduced to 
the remaining expedient, so I ordered the commissioner at 
the Westminster to have Alderney cream served to me 
every morning. Nothing could have been finer, so that it 
is not the quality of which I complain but the price ; when 
I received the account I discovered that I had been build- 
ing up my health upon a foundation of cream at two dollars 
a quart ! Now, do not look aghast as I did. I endeavored 
to persuade mj'self tliat I had forgotten my table of Eng- 
lish mone}', or that my entire bill amounted to eight shil- 
lings. I rang for the commissioner and advised with him. 
He assured me the bill was correct and seemed to be sur- 
prised that cream had declined to eight shillings, the usual 
price being ten ! I had always heard the capabilities of 
the Alderney highly spoken of and for the first time I 
realized how high they were. 

What a beautiful spot is Warwick ! These sweet Eng- 
lish towns are much more attractive than wild, 'wildering 
London. Here one has such a supreme sense of rest, away 
from the gloom and clamor of ponderous houses and noisy 



64 PICrURES AND PORTRAITS 

streets, away from the vast palaces where great questions 
of state are discussed, away from that ceaseless whirlpool 
of trade. 

After we had deposited our luggage and engaged rooms 
at the Warwick Arms we strolled out through the streets 
of the town. I noticed cleanly highways, beautiful resi- 
dences, extensive shops, and then wandered toward the 
eminence on which the castle stands, lingered upon the 
new stone bridge that girds the same beautiful Avon ever 
in our wake wheresoever we may turn. The picture was 
one of unrivalled beauty. The sky Avas pale blue, flecked 
with filmy clouds, and the sun just sinking behind the 
western hills, shed a rosy glow through the haz}'^ atmos- 
phere. It was much such an afternoon as we frequently 
have at home in earl)- spring. The luxurious shrubbery in 
the vast park bent low to rest on the gentle waters they 
bordered. Shakespeare must have been referring to this 
sweet river when he said : 

"The current, that with gentle murmur glided 

Thou knoAv'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage ; 

But when his fair course is not hindered, 

He makes sweet music with the enamelled stones, 

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage ; 

And so, by many winding nooks he strays, 

With willing sport to the wild ocean." 

The ancient willows droop to kiss the ripples as they 
pass, and others like them in Denmark are undoubtedly 
alluded to by Queen Gertrude, in the passage where she tells 
Laertes of his fair sister's death, beginning: 

*' There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook, 
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." 

On the odorous English road, the rustic lads and lassies 
doffed their hats and dropped us courtesies, as they came 
to or from their country homes in the neighboring shires 
of Stafford, Leicester, or Worcester; from the hills of 
Fenny Compton, the valley of the Stour, or the Dale of the 
Red Horse; from the Northwest, near the red marl and 
sandstone mounds, and from the vicinity of Morton Hill 
and Dunsmore Heath; some trudging their way on foot, 
while those from a greater distance rode in their cosey 
wagonettes. Then we sauntered through the obscure lanes 
at the rear of the castle walls, where ruddy-faced bahies 
played in the mire, with the poultry, and where low- 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 65 

thatched cottages were as clean and orderly as the splendid 
palaces across the river; and as I retraced my steps to the 
quiet little hotel in the town, I marvelled if I should enjoy 
the interior of the home of the mediap.val Earls of Warwick, 
as much as I had my afternoon ramble on the country side. 



LETTER XIII. 

"Old castles ou the cliffs arise, 
Proudly toM^ering in the skies ; 
Rushing from the woods, the spires 
Seem from hence ascending fires ; 
Half his beams Apollo sheds 
On the yellow mountain -heads 
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks, 
And glitters on the broken rocks," 

John Dyer. 

Warwick, England, March, 1878. 

My first work this morning was to visit Warwick Castle, 
which I was as anxious to see as all who have preceded 
me. Had a register been kept of these thousands it would 
have been as curious as any in history. So we rang the 
bell at the great iron gate, which was swung back by the 
old janitress, who acts as a sort of lady abbess, or as I 
have heard her called "jailoress" of the old pile. She 
looked like one of the weird sisters who met Macbeth 
upon the heath to tell him of his future greatness, and 
as we entered the stone-canopied avenue, we were greeted 
by a ruddy young English girl at the door of the porter's 
lodge whom the old witch presented as her "servant- 
gal." This woman who must be at least eighty, told 
us that she had been retained by the Neville family since 
childhood; and for ever so many years she has day after 
day repeated the stories of Guy of Warwick, and sounded 
the vast metal porridge-pot with the flesh-fork in which 
the smoking stew was prepared for liim and his warriors, 
and from which his successors have drunk their drauofht 
through the centuries. It is now used as a punch-bowl 
with a capacity for 102 gallons, and on the occasion of 
the coming of age of the present earl, the antiquated Hecate 
saw it "thrice filled and emptied." The armor^ consisting 

6* 



66 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

of helmet, shield, sword, and breastplate of this legendary 
Gny, are preserved here and weigh 111 pounds. Among 
other relics are trophies of his exploits on Dunsmore 
Heath. Our historian told us of the vast number of 
Americans who track hitherward en 7'oute to London ; "Ah 
yes," she said, "I have been her^ many a \^ear; they never 
fail us, and they are the most liberal of all my visitors." 
This sly hint of the shrewd old crone I very well compre- 
hended, but I had the sliilling ready and as she spoke I 
almost felt as if I stood in the presence of one of the old 
dependents of tiie "king-maker." 

We reached the castle by a cavernous path hewn through 
the solid rock, by a long ascent, and heard the dull crush 
of the sodden gravel beneath our feet in this novel vault- 
like tunnel. At the terminus of the wonderful granite for- 
mation our path lay between a colonnade of tall and ven- 
erable trees whose interlacing branches were heavy with 
nature's tear-drops, and the weeping willows and sweeping 
cedars made mournful music on the cloudy morning. As 
1 advanced my thoughts reverted to the long ago, when 
came hither the lords and ladies of dead kings to visit 
their opulent and half-royal entertainer, who gladly con- 
sented to bankrupt himself to gratify his sovereign. In 
my mind's eye I saw again the cavalcades of knights and 
kings and queens, radiant in powdered curls, golden lace, 
crimson plush, and ermine, treading the paths I now trod, 
coming from the surrounding country and from great Lon- 
don town ever so many centuries ago. They came to visit 
my lord and lad}^, holding high revel in yonder gra3'^ mon- 
astic towers which burst upon my vision as I reached the 
plateau on which the glorious monument stands. How 
supremely beautiful and lovely ! The air was mild, and 
the sward smooth and green. My eyes have become accus- 
tomed to these English landscape scenes, that seem repro- 
duced in India ink, and partially obliterated by having had 
a moist sponge passed over them. I now appreciate their 
artistic points, but at first they formed a dismal contrafef 
to our intensely clear and brilliant American pictures. 

All was silent as the grave, for the great people were 
away off in London, and their palace was left in charge 
of the servants and seneschals. We ascended a long 
flight of steps on our left and passed into a marble ves- 
tibule overarched by a Gothic canopy ; but we had to 
tarry for no one is in a hurry here; all classes take their 
time, the servants are slow, the peers are slower, and all 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 6t 

is slow except the telegrnpli and steam, and they wait for 
no man, ''nor woman neither." Then the door was opened 
unto us, and I found myself in the halls where eaiis had 
been born and bred since the dtiys of William the Con- 
queror. To the riglit lay the grand baronial hall with its 
richly carved and gilded roof of Gothic architecture, its 
Venetian marble floor, and antique wainscoting ; on the 
east wall were hung the armor, swords, and matchlocks of 
a long line of baronets. Many of these treasures remain 
as trophies of victory, wrested in battle from their van- 
quished foe in the days of Edward I, II, the campaigns 
of the Black Prince, the reigns of Henry YI, Edward lY, 
and subsequent ages. On the opposite wall were long win- 
dows set in deep embrasures, and equally distant between 
each of these were the effigies of the former lords of this 
fair demesne clad in armor and mounted upon their favorite 
chargers. From this point I viewed the situation of the 
liill. Towers were all around us; the castle, the cathedral, 
the donjon-keep, and the high walls made the level at the 
head of the stony walk a sort of inclosure. Looking down 
upon the Avon, a hundred feet below, we saw it softly and 
silently lapping the base of the mighty rock, the founda- 
tion of this stronghold of "ancient and chivalrous splen- 
dor." 

To add to the romantic and unequalled scene is the 
densely wooded portion of the park, which has been allow- 
ed to go unkempt and uncombed ; also the dilapidated 
remains of an ancient bridge; and farther up, the beautiful 
stream is crossed by a new stone structure with pictu- 
resque adornments; the plains of the Eeldon and the wood- 
land of the Arden may be seen, and in the far distance 
above all, and beyond all, are the mist-capped heights of 
Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. As I waited in this 
hall historical memories deluged my brain — memories that 
seemed to waken into life in the midst of the blazoned ar- 
morial bearings and heraldic devices of this noble house. 
And as I pondered in this atmosphere of ancient glory, our 
cicerone^ the palace guide, appeared. He was a faded, 
blase, drowsy, rheumatic English servant, who received us 
with a supreme sense of indifference that proved his call- 
ing. We followed him into the great hall, and banqueting 
hall, where everything was gorgeous, lordly, and artistic, 
but, unhappil}^, very new, for, of course, the necessary 
repairs have been made since the disastrous fire in 18Y1. 
But in the state-bedroom, known as the "Queen Anne 



68 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Chamber," the magnificent appointments remain in their 
original state ; here all the furniture has the rigid straight- 
ness of that period. The bed of crimson velvet is the same 
occupied by Queen Elizabeth when she visited Warwick. 
The chairs, square and antique, were upholstered in crimson 
velvet, enriched by an arabesque pattern in applique of sea- 
green and white satin, stitched with golden thread ; doubt- 
less the handiwork of royal fingers long since crumbled to 
dust. In this room are the world-renowned tapestries, pic- 
turing the gardens of Versailles, the pleasures of seeing 
these in nature I have daily in contemplation. To desig- 
nate individually the treasures of art in oil, marble, buhl, 
marquetrie, parquetrie, mosaic, bronze, and porcelain, scat- 
tered through the gilt drawing-room, cedar drawing-room, 
red drawing-room. Milady's Boudoir, and the Chapel Pas- 
sage, I should be minute and tiresome. Here the artists 
of all decades and countries are represented by glorious 
monuments of their genius and assiduity; Salvator Rosa, 
Teniers, Gerard Dow, Vandervelde, Vandyke, Rubens, Van 
Mieris, Paolo Veronese, Zucchero, Lely, Murillo, and even 
Raffaelle are here. Our rheumatic friend pointed to pic- 
tures, statuary, old arms, and relics of special interest, 
signed us to windows to view the splendid outside combi- 
nations of sky, water, and foliage, and now and then mum- 
bled a sort of idiotic catalogue of the surrounding history. 
The display of fire arms excited my interest, for I saw that 
the pistols three or four centuries ago were made very 
nearly after the model now so prevalent in America, and 
which we claim as our invention. I thank the present Earl 
of Warwick for the apparent care of this treasure-house of 
English history, and will not complain of the sullen con- 
duct of his gouty subordinate. I enjoyed to the fullest 
extent all I came to see ; a splenetic attendant could not 
prevent that. I had m}^ shillings ready to preserve us from 
his malediction, and retired into the garden to stroll by the 
ancient moat, through the charming pleasure-grounds and 
winding paths, bordered by the stately cedars of Lebanon. 
And the old gardener in the meanwhile told us of the kind- 
ness of the present Earl to his servants, and catalogued in 
chronological order his issue. We paid the old fellow a 
shilling for his courteous replies to our questions, and then 
he insisted we should enter the greenhouse to see the famous 
vase, nearly seven feet high, and twenty-one in circumfer- 
ence, with quaint handles of twisted snakes ; a magnificent 
piece of Grecian art, carven from one solid block of purel}' 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 69 

white marble. It was found at the bottom of a lake in 
the Emperor Adrian's villa, at Tivoli, one of the exquisite 
suburban palaces of Rome, and was purchased by the an- 
cestor of the present Earl, from Sir William Hamilton, 
ambassador at Naples in the last century. Of course I had 
the curiosity just to peep into the dungeon beneath Caesar's 
Tower, where the names, devices, and sentences in English 
and French, cut into the walls, were a sad reminder what 
the wretched captives who pined within these charnel-houses 
did to beguile the weary hours. And then I attempted 
to mount the summit of Guy's Tower, where the guide 
assured me I could obtain the finest possible ^ iew of the 
surrounding counties for many miles; but when I had less 
than half accomplished my tedious task, I abnndoned it, 
and was obliged to rest before I retraced my steps over the 
steep and rickety stair. No doubt it would have been a 
creditable feat to have completed the ascent, but I never 
aspired to glory of that description. After doing this 
proud offspring of the ages, I returned to my little boudoir 
in the Warwick Arms, where I write to you, the eyes of 
Lord Leigh, another of the grand moguls of the vicinage, 
peering down upon me from the opposite wall. Within an 
hour I am going to bid adieu to the native town of the eru- 
dite scholars, Walter, of Coventry, and John Rous, and 
post across this enchanting section of England to the other 
historical and romantic points in opulent Warwickshire. 



LETTER XI Y. 

" With Leicester, Lord of Kenilworlh, in mournful robes, was seen 
The gifted, great Elizabeth, high England's matchless queen. 
Tressilian's wild and manly glance, and Varny's darker gaze, 
Sought Amy Robsart's brilliant form, too fair for earthly praise." 

Crarles Swain. 

London, March, 1878. 

Back again in old London, under the shadow of West- 
minster Abbe3\ within sight of Westminster Hall ; the 
darkly-flowing Thames to my left, with the dense veil of 
black fog that London may indeed call its own, hanging 
low over the city, and Big Ben's deep-mouthed voice bid- 
ding me an honest welcome ! 



to PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Yesterday morning after completing a bargain with the 
Jehu of the Warwick Arms, to drive ns to Leamington, 
about ten miles distant, for the sum of fourteen shillings, 
which I considered excessively reasonable, remembering 
our American tariff, anotiier enterprising cabby offered to 
do the same work for ten shillings. Of course, I was some- 
what provoked, not alone on account of the four shillings, 
but I felt the trick of the first sharper like an insult to mj'' 
intelligence. I could not repudiate my promise, however, 
to the former, but endeavored to reduce him to the price of 
his rival, without effect; he said his rival did not know his 
business, that he could give us no history of the country 
through wliich our route la}' ; " but I, madam, am acquainted 
with ever}'^ rood of the ground, and can relate all the hin- 
teresting hanecdotes." The last persuasive promise settled 
the matter; wdio would forego the benefit of such a store 
of knowledge for the paltry sum of four shillings? As we 
turned our backs upon the home wliere Richard Neville, 
the frank and hospitable '^ king-maker" had lived and gov- 
erned, I found the conveyance comfortable, and the driver 
reasonably intelligent, as he drove over the broad smooth 
English roads and past the comfortable English homes, 
pointing out tlie great estates and naming their titled own- 
ers. He had opened his budget and I allowed him to prattle 
on. He related the story of Ethelfleda, Alfred's daughter, 
who fortified and contributed to the prosperity of Warwick; 
he repeated pages of Dugdale's narratives, and of the Ro- 
man occupation, but he evinced special delight in dwelling 
upon the glories of the " king-maker;" how his bravery had 
attached to his interests the military; how his gifts and 
friendship were alvva3's regarded as genuine; how the peo- 
ple in general, and particularly his retainers, were more de- 
voted to his iron will, than to tiie English law ; and by his 
fulness of soul how he had conquered all men^s affections. 
Our rural communicant said notliing of the ancient Earl's 
conquests over female hearts ; I presume that he left to 
conjecture. 

It is March, and although there is no snow on the ground, 
nor ice in the streams, there is sufficient chill in the air to 
cause me to draw my fur cloak around me; but this was a 
secondary discomfort in the midst of these storied scenes. 
Oh ! for the bright winter skies of my own dear home just 
now — nothing could be more cheering tlian to ride through 
this lovely country in our incomparable weather. Art and 
nature combine to make rural England a small realm of 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 71 

loveliness, and, notwithstanding there are many gloomy 
days between December and April, still the best English 
homes are abodes of almost royal luxury, and when spring 
and summer follow, that which has been done by wealth to 
beautify the roads and the fields, and the entire country, 
makes the scene one of indescribable splendor! Yes, it 
deserves just this one word splendor. 

A very short ride of a mile brought us to Guy's Cliff, 
familiar to all of us as the chosen home and tomb of the 
fabled hero who slew the giant Colbrand, and whom the 
early metrical romances make a champion against the Danes. 
Now this point presented to Jehu a rare opportunity to 
paint a poetic picture of the famous old legend, and lie 
proceeded to "borate." The cave where lived and died the 
said Guy, was scooped with his own hands from the rock. 
It is treason to harbor a doubt of the fact ; for the legend 
tells us: — 

" There with my hands I hewed a house 
Out of a craggy rock of stone ; 
And lived like a palmer poor, 
Within that cave myself alone." 

I am rather incredulous as to the last line of this poetical 
autobiograph}^; the old story tells us that the fair Phillis 
would hie hither to bestow alms upon the solitary man, 
and receive in return his saintly counsel (?). Phillis never 
recognized in the hermit her husband, whom she believed to 
have long since died, or to be a captive in the Holy Land. 
Phillis, unlike Juliet, was not easily won; she did not tell 
Guy, at their first interview, to deny his father and refuse 
his name, and for that name which was no part of him to 
take all herself; nor did she exclaim, "In truth, I am too 
fond," and then ask "Dost thou love me?" and before 
Guy could reply, answered her own question by "I know 
thou wilt say — Ay ;" and clinched the contract by adding, 
"And I will take thy word." And then implored him to 
swear fidelity by something more constant than the moon. 
Oh no! Phillis lived in more provincial da^'s, and bore a 
greater resemblance to Penelope, who was so loath to make 
a final decision. Guy's sweetheart was a perverse young- 
lady, who frowned, and said him nay; who required deeds 
of high intrepidity from her suitor before she yielded her 
affection and liberty; all of which he wrought for the 
love of this woman, for he was in the very summer of the 
tender passions; and then after years — oh ye gods pity 
us ! — true to his sex he resrretted that he had caused so 



Y2 PICTURES AND PO»TRAITS 

much mischief and bloodshed for the sake of one in this 
world of women, and he betook him to a life of penance in 
a stony abode from sheer remorse. Tradition tells us that 
he did not disclose to her his identity till he was dying, 
but I have a sly notion that these two understood each 
other all along. The spot is one of surpassing beauty, and 
if Phillis retained any of the powerful witchery of her 
3-outh, that goaded Guy to his valiant exploits, he did not 
suffer the many privations during his hermitage, attending 
a life of asceticism. 

Here was another of those exquisite rural English pic- 
tures. The verdure was soft and green, the river gentle, 
except where it had been dammed (mechanically), and then 
it impetuously foamed and raged, to help the evolutions of 
the old mill ; the rocks were moss-grown and ivy-wreathed, 
and the rustic foot-bridge across the Avon in a rapid state 
of decay. The mansion is quite modern, and the residence 
of the Hon. Mrs. Percy, who was "at home;" at such times 
it is never shown to visitors ; but after enjoying the 
fresh fields, the paths trod by the chantry-priests of other 
days, the groves of stalely elms, the avenues overshaded 
by firs, we remounted our little chaise and proceeded on 
our way over the Kenilworth road. Not far beyond the 
Cliff, and on the opposite side of the highway is Blacklow 
Hill, the scene of the execution of Piers Gaveston, Earl of 
Cornwall, the favorite of Edward II, and the hated enem}'- 
of Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Gaveston had 
stigmatized Warwick as " the black hound of Arden," and 
when the latter attacked Deddington Castle, where Gaves- 
ton was lodged for safety, he was at once captured and 
taken to Warwick Castle, and thence to the wooded eleva- 
tion scarcel}'^ more than a mile distant, where he paid for 
his spite with his head. This place of execution was alone 
marked by an inscription on the rock, now quite obliter- 
ated, until Mr. Greatheed, the father of Mrs. Percy, present 
owner of Guy's Cliff, erected a stone cross to the honor of 
" the minion of a hateful king." 

There had been a hunt at one of the great manors in the 
neighborhood, and as we wended our way toward Kenil- 
worth we had a fair view of a flock of natty English 
lordlings in red jackets and jockey caps skimming across 
the country on their spirited coursers, followed by their 
grooms. As we entered the town I was impressed by the 
modern appearance of its architecture. The buildings are 
all humble and comfortable, and reminded me very much 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. "ZS 

of the outskirts of the little town of Freehold, in Mon- 
mouth County, New Jersey. When we reached the Castle 
of Kenilworth there was a heavy shower driving upon 
us. You who have been in England can appreciate the 
delight of these unexpected and penetrating downpours. 
Meanwhile we paused in a veritable little country tavern 
opposite. Pray do not be shocked at our haven of rest, 
for there was no more aristocratic inn available, and you 
know "drowning men catch at straws," but we improved 
on that by taking a "hot Scotch" without the straw. The 
sky was clearing as rapidly as it had clouded, and I went 
out to get my shilling's worth of the magnificent ruin. 
The gate-house is the only habitable portion of the build- 
ing, which is occupied by the keeper, who wore the garb of 
those in the employ of ro^^alty, and Ids daughter who sold 
photographs of the gray old towers reft of all their former 
glory. I made my way over the grass-grown path by a 
o-entle ascent to the eminence where all that remains of the 
castle are found. Immediately beneath me lay a wide and 
undulating expanse of greensward, luxurious pines, minia- 
ture lakes, drained moat, and precipitous ravines; to the 
east was the church spire and the debiHs of the Augustine 
Monastery, covered hy a veil of mist, and at my right the 
unroofed and dilapidated halls, where we can read tales of 
history and romance, love and hate, crime, misery, strata- 
gem, and prodigality, from the days of Geoffroi de Clinton 
to those of Robert Dudley and Cromwell's commissioner. 
Is it necessary for me to repeat the memories that floated 
back through three hundred years as I stood in the shelter 
of this crumbling and skeleton structure? The rivalries 
of Sussex and Leicester, the wrongs and sorrows of Amy 
Robsart, the villanies of Yarny and Lambourne, the con- 
stancy of Tressilian, and the splendid pageant of the Yir- 
gin Queen. Ah! surely poor Amy, you were an outcast 
and prisoner, while your husband, the parasite and favorite 
of royalty, had a queen for his guest! And as I turned 
toward the Donjon keep nature seemed to mourn and weep 
for the foul murder of the beautiful girl three centuries 
ago. 

Our path to Leamington was broad and level ; something 
smoother than an ordinary turnpike, more like cement, per- 
haps a macadamized road, and when we entered the fashion- 
able English spa I felt as if I had been translated to my 
native land, so modern is this sweet town upon the Learn. 
It impressed me as very much like our beautiful Williams- 
7 



Y4 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

port, in Lycoming Count}', Pennsylvania. Leamington 
Priors is the outgrowth of the last forty years, its cause of 
prosperity, being attributed to the medicinal qualities of 
its mineral waters. In 1784 a saline spring was discovered 
by one Benjamin Satchwell, a village shoemaker, and to 
him may the now flourishing resort offer all thanks for its 
rise and affluence. Here we took the train for London, 
ninety-seven miles distant, where we arrived about nine p.m. 



LETTER XV. 

" I waited for the train at Coventry ; 
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, 
To watch the three tall spires ; aud there I shaped 
The city's ancient legend into this : — " 

Tennyson. 

London, March, 1878. 

I REGRET that I did not stop over long enough at Kenil- 
worth to run across the country to the ancient city of 
Coventr}^, only five miles off. It is chiefly attractive by 
the story of the lady Grodiva, woven into immortal verse 
by the British poet-laureate, Alfred Tennyson, But I was 
not idle, having collected a good deal of information from 
several kind people whom I met at the little country inn 
near Kenilworth, and afterwards in the station where we 
were obliged to wait a long time before leaving Leaming- 
ton for London. Indeed, apart from the beautiful countess 
herself, Coventry and the surrounding country are very 
full of liistory, ancient, monastic, literary, and scientific. 
The town has over 41,000 inhabitants, and the manufac- 
ture of ribbons, silk, and watches so considerable, as to 
give employment to five or six thousand men, and almost 
as many women and children; and then there is a large 
additional population engaged in the same work in the 
neighboring parish of Foleshill. I specially regretted not 
having seen what the people in Leamington talk so much 
about, St. Mary's Hall, a splendid and remarkable edifice, 
])uilt in 1450, and at present in an admirable state of pres- 
ervation. It is the headquarters of one of the old British 
guilds, and is regarded as one of the most magnificent 
specimens of ancient domestic architecture in the United 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. TS 

Kingdom. Here, and all over this part of England, the 
name of Lady Godiva is celebrated and preserved as the 
worshipped saint of the common people. The story is a 
beautiful one, and I sat and listened for quite an hour as I 
heard it related by an old village gossip, who tells it for 
the purpose of securing a few shillings from the passing 
stranger. 

In 1043 the fifth Earl of Mercia and his lady, Godiva, 
founded and richly endowed a Benedictine monastery on 
the ruins of a nunnery, destroyed in 1016 by Canute, the 
Dane. The old legends tell us this monastery was un- 
speakably grand, a perfect casket, in fact, of gold and sil- 
ver. Leofric and his countess were both buried in the 
porch of this priory. Now, whether this Ladj^ Godiva is 
the same immortalized by Tennyson my informant was 
unable to say, but the accepted authority of the district, 
Sir William Dugdale, who was a devout believer in the ro- 
mance, gives the following account of it: "The Countess 
Godiva, bearing an extraordinary affection to this place, 
often and earnestly besought her husband that for the love 
of God and the Blessed Virgin he would free it from that 
grievous servitude whereunto it was subject; but he, re- 
buking her for importuning him in a manner so inconsis- 
tent with his profit, commanded that she should thence- 
forward forbear to move therein; yet she, out of her wom- 
anish pertinacity, continued to solicit him, insomuch that 
he told her if she would ride on horseback naked, from one 
end of the town to the other, in sight of all the people, he 
would grant her request. Whereunto she returned, " But 
will you give me leave to do so?" and he replying "Yes," 
the noble lady upon an appointed day got on horseback 
naked, with her hair loose, so that it covered all her body 
but her legs ; and thus performing her journey, she re- 
turned with joy to her husband, who thereupon granted to 
the inhabitants a charter of freedom." . . . The residents 
of the town, grateful to their beautiful sovereign for the 
delicate task she had accepted to secure their civil fran- 
chises, with one accord withdrew from the highways and 
windows in order that as little pain as possible should be 
inflicted upon their royal Eve; but one Tom, by profession 
a tailor, yielded to the rai*e temptation, and for his lack of 
moral valor, had his ej^es shrivelled into darkness in his 
head. There is a grotesque picture of the count and 
countess set up in Trinity Church; he holds a scroll in his 
hand bearing these words :— 



t6 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

*'3, Ceuriche, for £oue of tliee, 
SDoe make Coocntre (Eol-frce." 

The Lady Godiva pageant that was instituted in the reign 
of the indolent voluptuary, Charles II, has not taken place 
within the last thirty years, and may confidently be num- 
bered among the jubilees of the past. In its days of youth 
and prosperity, the festival was one of unprecedented splen- 
dor, and was always dignified b}^ the presence of the muni- 
cipal authorities. Of course, the spectacle of St. George on 
horseback, and her uncovered ladyship, was the principal 
attraction of the saturnalian revel. The mayor, aldermen, 
and sheriffs, ancient orders and beneficial societies, with 
their streamers, decorations, and bands of music, presented 
a fantastic and bizarre sight. 

Out of many of tliese old places, the haunts of tradition- 
ary heroes, martyrs, and saints, imagination creates some 
of its wildest and sweetest fancies. Within a circle of ten 
or twent}^ miles, I find material for a succession of dramas, 
each with a basis of fact, which time turns into fable, or 
mystifies into doubt. Shakespeare himself, the sublimest 
wonder of all, grows more sacred and more spirituelle as 
the ages go on, while Guy of Warwick, and Richard Neville 
the groat "king-maker," and gentle Amy Robsart, and now 
the fair-haired Godiva, become more and more legendary 
with the centuries. 1 like it better so. We are too young 
in America to have such advantages, and hence the scarcity 
of our great authors, in comparison with the rich treasures 
dug out of those ancient mines, and coined into such golden 
music. There is not an old English house that has not a 
hoard of precious memories. Even the fireside gossip makes 
material for future poets and historians, and there is not 
an old church from the Mersey to the Tweed, from the Irish 
coast to DoA'er, that is not the storehouse of gho?5tly remi- 
niscences. 

All over England the early example of London in regard 
to ancient charities is imitated, and everywhere in the town 
of Coventry the goodness of the Lady Godiva in relieving 
the poor is perpetuated in the rude art of the time. Ford's 
Hospital, founded in 1529, by William Ford, a merchant, 
for the reception of aged females, has grown in dignity with 
the years, and has been increased by donations from other 
parties; there are twenty old women in this beautiful 
building, who receive 38. 6tZ. per week and coals, and twenty- 
five other women, called out-of-door recipients, who receive 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 1*7 

the same amount of money and a ton of coal eacli year. 
Then there is Babhike Hospital, founded in 1806, 1)3'^ Tho- 
mas Bond, for ten poor men ; but subsequent gifts have so 
augmented its funds, that it now receives over forty persons. 
Theri there is a superb school for boys, founded by Thomas 
Wheatly, 'Mayor of Coventry, in 1560; the revenues are 
$4500 per annum. Then there is St. Jolin's Hospital and 
free school, founded in 1155, for the sick and poor, and for 
a free school with an annual income of $5000. There are 
several other schools and hospitals liberally endowed cen- 
turies ago, which, in the progress of time have largely 
increased by additional bequests and enhancements of land, 
from wliich you will perceive how very rich is every part 
of England. There is hardly a shire or parish in which 
you will not find one or more endowments, as they are 
called, for religious, charitable, and educational purposes; 
most of them beginning ever so long ago, from a very small 
provision and gathering in value with the growth of the 
population, and the importance of the real estate set apart 
by the old-time philanthropists. England is deeply afflicted 
by the growing curse of pauperism, and the equally dan- 
gerous element, millions of discontented laborers, but these 
charitable preparations against ignorance and misfortune, 
show not only the great care of the generous leaders of 
society, but also the great opulence of the kingdom itself. 

As I sit in my little room in this cathedral of a hotel, 
pondering over my sweet swift visit to Chester, Birming- 
ham, Stratford, Warwick, Kenilworth, Leamington, and my 
flash back to this great, grim, gray capital, I wonder if I 
shall ever see it all again. How many people cross the 
ocean from our country to these old places witli their minds, 
if not tlieir eyes shut. They rush through England, Ire- 
land, Scotland, across the Continent, even into the Holy 
Land, and perhaps away off to India, Asia, and Africa, and 
are back again in the twinkling of an eye, as it were ; and 
for what? I fear only to boast to those who have been less 
fortunate. Ah, me ! how I commiserate such people. For 
myself, I am never tired learning from this mighty volume. 
Experience. It teaches me how small I am (not ph3^sically 
but mentally), and though I love my own dear land, I am 
never oppressed nor fatigued by the knowledge I gather in 
these strange, ancient, and suggestive scenes. And still a 
voice within asks. Shall I ever sit by the sweet English 
ingleside again ? So good-night, my voiceless, patient 
friend. 



PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER XYI. 

" Sing— sing — music was given 
To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving; 
Souls here like planets in Heaven, 
By harmony's laws alone are kept moving. 
Beauty may boast of her eyes and her cheeks, 
But love from the lips his true archery wings ; 
And she, who but feathers the dart when she speaks, 
At once sends it home to the heart when she sings." 

Tom Moore. 

London, March, 1878. 

At last I have had an opportunity of enjoying the 
Royal Opera in London. Here long enough to beware of 
hasty judgments, I will not trust myself to avow them; 
but I may whisper that I am not quite carried away by a 
first experience. We secured stalls in the parquette for 
$5.25 each, and last evening retiring into the secrecy of my 
closet, I " unclasp'd the wedded eagles of my belt," and 
proceeded to array me in festive regalia before going to 
Covent Garden Theatre to see the nobility before the cur- 
tain, and the great melodists under the curtain. The opera 
house is large, heavy, and solid ; verj' English, with a little 
of the air of musty style that makes age respectable, and 
goes far to consecrate disabled furniture and dilapidated 
arras. Although the present stupendous structure has 
been open only since 1858, it has encountered disaster by 
fire several times subsequent to the erection of the original 
edifice, in 1732. In this hric-a-hrac period, when the an- 
tique is the newest fashion, and when to be in the mode 
we must drag out of old garrets our great grandmother's 
(those who have had one) spinning-wheel and andirons, 
and resurrect long-expired spoons, and tea-kettles, and 
knee-bilckles, I supposed such a venerable dame as Covent 
Garden would have thrown me at once into violent ecsta- 
cies. But she didn't ! 

Though the auditorium of this theatre is larger than our 
Academy it looks smaller, as the tiers range higher, and 
are divided into close Boxes heavily draped with florid 
tapestries. Many of these belong to noble families, and 
when they do not wish to occupy them they are not too 
proud to let the managers sell them to the highest bidder, 
and they pocket the money. Red and gold are the pre- 
vailing colors, the crimson dominating the whole. We 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. Y9 

started for the opera with the intention of hearing Madlle. 
Sarda, but before we had been seated many moments an 
Italian appeared upon the stage, and at once my heart 
sank within me, I anticipated disappointment. Our friend 
from the sunny South told us, in very bad English, 
'' Madlle. Sarda was ill, and, in consequence, opera and 
prima donna were both changed, but we should hear 
13ertelli and Smeroschi," two names wholly unknown to 
me. The opera was Verdi's superb creation, Un hallo in 
Maschera^ that I had often enjoyed at home, and it was 
magnificently rendered. So great a city as London is 
necessarily a centre of musical art. AH the eminent 
singers, and, of course, many that we are even unac- 
quainted with in America float here in the season, to get 
the highest prices for their genius; and yet Italy and 
Russia often outbid London for such celebrities as Patti 
and her new husband, ISicolinni. The orchestra, of at 
least seventy-five instruments, was full, correct, harmoni- 
ous, and nobly mastered; and the work upon the stage 
complete. The recitatives were chaste and strongly accen- 
tuated, the arias sometimes sweet and allegro, at others 
sublime and sombre, and the ensembles grand. The troupe 
was particularly strong in its subsidiary force; the ballet 
brilliant and effervescing in the admirable scenerj^, and that 
perfect discipline, which may be called the crowning glory 
of patience and time. It is readily seen that the opera in 
London is a government machine, and not a matter of 
speculation. It is an institution like a great castle, built 
to last, and not made for the pleasure of the rich merely, 
or for a spasmodic season. 

There was nothing popular about it except the fine reper- 
toire. Even the cheapest places were occupied by the 
better class of middle Londoners. Americans always seek 
the best; they travel first class, they dine a la carte, they 
never restrain their physical nor moral appetite for a few 
shillings, and of course they want the best for their money. 
In the overpowering tide of travel that sweeps across the 
Atlantic, the major portion are pleasure seekers, and they 
act on the principle that they are resolved to enjoy their 
holiday carousal with all its epicurean attributes. Our 
party sat in the midst of the creme de la crime feeling 
for the time a sort of millionnaire superiority. I was by 
no means oppressed because to m^' right sat a countess 
and to my left a princess. In this state of supreme com- 
placency I devoted myself to observation. Very unlike. 



80 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

indeed, was the prospect contrasted with the radiant and 
varied habitues of our Academy of Music. An amplitude 
of gaudy dress, but wholly incongruous. Ponderous old 
dowagers in point d^aiguille and diamonds, redolent of 
rare roast beef and port, chaperoned their 3'^outht'ul female 
relatives. There seemed to be a dearth of gay gallant 
youths. I missed the fresh maidens accompanied by suit- 
ors or friends, that fill our play houses; and then, the 
sweet newly-created matrons, still in their tyronism, that 
time and tribulation have not yet robbed of their matures- 
cent bloom. The English girl migrates from a hoyendish 
school miss, to a square, solid female bovine; nowhere 
have I seen that stage or age of feminine beauty, so pre- 
valent in America, that is only comparable to a superbly 
ripe moss rose, full, fragrant, and magnificent. A British 
fledgling of eighteen or nineteen summers, under tiie pro- 
tection of her father's vving, in wliite silk and white mittens 
reaching the elbows, and Mrs. Langtry, the reigning Eng- 
lish belle, at whom the Prince of Wales has been casting 
hulVs eyea^m canary-satin and ten-button black-kid gloves, 
were the only ladies in the vast assemblage that recalled a 
vision of our fair ones at home. The opera is always a 
resort for well-bred indiflference, a savage noise in tlie midst 
of beautiful music — a place in fact where the so-called cul- 
tivated classes rush to display their uncultivated rudeness. 
Ah ! how well these English understand impassive inso- 
lence. 

Why is it that the most pretentious people in America 
are Often the most offensive in public places? The more 
elegant the entertainment the more intrusive and noisy 
the}^ are; and so it is here, as I learn from those who are 
initiated into the ways and means of the better orders. It 
was certainly so last night. There was a box full of no- 
bility, so much I gleaned from surrounding comments. 
They arrived late — 9.30 P. m. — and had evidently been 
dining; in jubilant moods, every one; they were as utterly 
regardless of the opera as if the vocalists had been planta- 
tion slaves. There was no protest against their rude pat- 
ronage, either on the part of the actors or the audience. 
I am obliged to confess I have seen the same effrontery at 
home, but never quite so boisterous and unblushing. 

The now familiar science of music takes rank amongst 
the modern arts. In the early ages, when architecture, 
painting, and sculpture rapidl}^ rose to perfection, the lyric 
science seemed to remain a dark and dormant stud3\ 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 81 

Through the most effulgent epochs of ancient civilization 
and intellectual splendor, music had no place, even when the 
brilliant epicurean and artistic sports were national amuse- 
ments. Nowhere do we read of a musical theorist, composer, 
or performer, among the master-minds of the mediaeval 
period of beaux-arts. Since the history of the creation, 
the rudest and most barbaric races have endeavored to 
make the eye and ear slaves to ecstatic and thrilling emo- 
tions; but what was intended to gratify the ear, did not 
progress to the lofty stages of cultivation. The first efforts 
to reduce to a system and classify its true principles, and 
reveal its clouded beauties, were apparent at the close of 
the Middle Ages. Therefore our music is the offspring of 
the last three or four centuries, and the lyric drama of much 
later date. Of course, Italy was the cradle where this child 
of harmony was born, at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century, and nursed until adopted l)y kindred nations. The 
polyphonic compositions were rapidly decaying for want of 
fresh tissue, and as the spirit of renaissance was fanatically 
imbued in the patrons of art in this period of scientific 
revolution, an attempt to establish the homophonous music 
of the Greek drama was made, and with the aid of the emi- 
nent devotes^ Caccini and Peri, our modern recitative was 
produced, as the most potential semblance of the chaste and 
classic cadenza. The foundation of this chanting tone had 
already been laid by Giovanni Palestrina, composer of the 
masses, hymns, and mottetas that won the encomiums of 
Pope Julius III, and created the author singer in the papal 
chapel. Cimaroso, Piccini, and Paesiello, the great com- 
posers of the last century, and the numberless ones of the 
present, do not display any marked changes in the empha- 
sis of their operas, other than the radical division of the 
aria from the recitative, effected by Alessandro Scarlatti, 
in the preceding century; he was seventy-six w4ien he died, 
and composed 118 operas, 200 masses, and 3000 cantatas, 
and many minor works. 

The earliest French operas, that were little more than 
complete imitations of the Italian,^ were b}' Jean Baptiste 
LuU}^, whose first introduction into the French capital 
was as a scullion in the palace of the Princess of Mont- 
pensier. He accumulated a vast fortune by his musical 
genius, and reigned absolute monarch of the stage until 
the advent of Rameau, who was not more than four 3'ears 
old at the demise of the musical dish-washer. Gluck, 
however, was the originator of French " grand opera," who 



82 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

struggled with his iniioviitions of st3^1e till his sixty-fiftli 
year, before he received a satisfactorj'- appreciation from 
the Paris public. The light operas of Herold, Halevy, 
Auber, and recently Offenbach, seem to have superseded 
the heavier and loftier works of Mihal, Rossini, and Meyer- 
beer, in the hearts of the laughter-loving Parisians. The 
earlier masterpieces, even of our contemporary musical 
authors, are overruled by their younger progeny ; thus, 
Aida, and Un ballo in Maschera are of the latest produc- 
tions of the Italian senator, Verdi ; so it is with Balfe, Auber, 
Herold, Donizetti, Thomas, Rossini, and Von Flotow, whose 
Martha is the only one of his operas known at home. 



LETTER XVI T. 

"To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and 
poetical, so inseparably intertwined iu the annals of romantic 
Spain, the Alhambra is as much an object of devotion as is the 
Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true 
and fabulous, how many songs and ballads, Arabian and Spanish, 
of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental 
pile !" — Washington Irving's Alhambra. 

London, March, 1878. 

Leicester Square is one of the interesting and beautiful 
sections of the West End. Formerl}' it was a fashion- 
able quarter; then it fell into disgrace l)y dint of neglect 
of the open space, tiiat has been transformed from a de- 
pository of refuse into an exquisite pul^lic garden at the 
individual expense of Baron Grant, whose palace in the 
neighborhood of the Albert Memorial, and en route to the 
Sontli Kensington Museum, is the present marvel and envy 
of the great metropolis. He was one of the money-kings 
of England, but has recently' been the prey of the merciless 
fiend Misfortune, and will be compelled to part with, even 
before he has occupied, his regal home that cost over three 
millions of our money. The current prophecy is, that the 
Baron Grant will never rise again; but he is elastic, am- 
bitious, and full of resources, and even now the requiting 
angel may be hovering over his dreams. He has been once 
or twice chosen to Parliament, but was deprived of his seat, 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 83 

owing to charges of corruption in procuring votes ; and 
while the newspapers were heaping vituperation upon him 
for every kind of fraudulent transaction in stocks and 
bonds, and he was entangled in all manner of lawsuits and 
contentions, he conceived the idea of rendering a public 
service by purifying this dismal spot in the heart of Lon- 
don. So in the centre of Leicester Square he planted plots 
of grass and parterres of flowers, erected fountains, and 
placed a statue of Shakespeare in the middle, surrounding 
the whole with seats for the aged and the poor. Leicester 
Square was the home of the mathematician, Sir Isaac New- 
ton ; the artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the free cari- 
caturist, Hogarth. On the east side of the circle, John 
Hunter, the pathologist and anatomist, lived and gathered 
his great museum of specimens illustrative of his profes- 
sion, snbsequently purchased by the government for the 
Royal College of Surgeons. These facts and adornments 
of Grant add immensely to the attractions of the Alhambra^ 
the famous variety theatre of the metropolis and one of the 
most profitable of the many great resorts of London. This 
great show-place is called after one of the oldest and most 
ornate and lascivious of the palaces of Moorish kings, near 
Granada, Spain, beautifully described by our own Wash- 
ington Irving in the words I have placed at the head of 
this chapter. The London architect seems to have had the 
Spanish Alhambra for his model, its fountains, dancing 
halls, conservatories, seraglios, baths and Saracenic splen- 
dors are all Oriental; the original palace was a combina- 
tion of gorgeous magnificence, not only in works of art and 
lovel^'^ women and ravishing music; but in forests, flowers, 
fruits, singing-birds, delicious fish, and curious animals, 
and all these are sousjht to be imitated in the dazzlino- 
music hall and ballet of the spectacular temple in Leicester 
Square. There is an inanimate duplicate of the palace at the 
Crystal Palace, Sydenham, which is a marvel of superb Span- 
ish coloring, mediaeval ornamentation, elaborate carving and 
quaint architectural style. This splendid attraction stands 
on a portion of the ground called after Robert Sydney, 
Earl of Leicester, who was father of the handsome Sydney, 
who figured in the Gramniont Memoire, published by Count 
Anthony Hamilton, in 1713 — a complete expose of the ex- 
ploits of his brother-in-law in love and at the gaming-table. 
It is a spacious structure in the moresque style of archi- 
tecture, and was first opened by a scientific and literary 
bod}', somewhat resembling the Polytechnic, on Regent 



84 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Street, under the title of Panopticon; but the night I at- 
tended the gilded palace the performance did not bear the 
slightest resemblance to the instructive discourses and 
palinodes of that "inspired uniformity of goodness," that 
Canning used to talk about. Twelve years ago gentlemen 
only attended this wild alluring saturnalia, and although 
the management still have an arduous task to secure license 
from the Lord Chamberlain each year, I am obliged to con- 
fess I saw nothing there but an exquisite musical extrava- 
ganza. A magnificent orchestra, such as the theatres of 
London only have, a ballet of 1*75 or 200 beautiful 3''oung 
women — not female wrecks, rendered dazzling by the aid 
of paint and calcium lights, such as constitue our home- 
ballets, — and an audience chamber thronged by quite the 
same class of ladies that frequent other playhouses. Per- 
haps there are performances here justifying the caustic 
iudignation of the circumspect, that I did not see. For, 
if all I have heard be true, tliere are ambiguous platforms 
under the same roof where the comedies, farces, dramas, and 
even tragedies of life are freely enacted. The operetta or 
vaudeville of "Wildfire" was to me a most brilliant and 
pleasing feast. The interior is flashingly beautiful, exceed- 
ing in size any one of the American theatres, the altitude 
rising five tiers. To the bonnetless ladies and female ushers 
I am becoming more and more reconciled each day I linger 
in the capital, but the imperative six or eight cents for a 
programme that oftentimes is thrust into the hands of the 
neophyte, and inadvertently accepted, the peddling of re- 
freshments amongst the audience between the several acts 
of a play, and the coolness and complacency with which 
the English ladies call for a glass of wine at the lobby-bars, 
are customs I cannot vindicate. The first, imposition; 
the second, indignity ; the third, indelicacy. True, the play- 
bill is unique, containing vignettes of the dramatis persons 
upon the margin, that might be worthily imitr^ted at home ; 
but I entreat you, shun the extortion and the impudence. 

The patriotism of the British, whether inborn of despotic 
rule or inherent loyalty, is ever apparent, and at all public 
resorts when a political witticism or local hit is made the 
hisses and applause are instant and prolonged. I have 
been present when an audience have joined with one ac- 
cord in a national chorus. To me, there is nothing more 
interesting and elevating than a people fired by public 
sentiment, but not the boisterous demonstrations I have 
witnessed here. It would not hurt us one bit were the 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 85 

Americans to borrow from their neighbors beyond the seas 
a portion of their national zeal ; I fear ever since the black 
and bloody cloud, War, has fallen from our horizon, we 
have been slowly and surely sinking into a state of indif- 
ferent fealty. 

All around Leicester Square are bright lights, and surg- 
ing cosmopolitan crowds. It is the favorite quarter of the 
foreigners, and abounds in foreign hotels, but the Alham- 
bra is the attractive constellation that sheds radiance over 
the secondary satellites. After seeing the beautiful statue 
of Shakespeare in the new park, I sauntered into a neigh- 
boring bookstore, and in raking through a heap of literary 
ashes, discovered a living coal that throws upon the exist- 
ence of the great poet an indisputable halo. It is an ex- 
tract from a poem by an English rhymster, Richard Barne- 
fielde, written in 1598, eighteen years before the death of 
Shakespeare. Whether old or new, it is ^uite conclusive, 
and a supreme satisfaction to me to find Shakespeare no 
myth, and such a proof of his title to his own work ; al- 
though "rare Ben Jonson's" melodious testimony in his 
favor ought to silence the clamor of envious tongues. 

" And Shakespeare, thou whose honey -flowing vein, 
(Pleasing the world) thy praises doth contain : 
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste, ■ 
Thy name in Fame's immortal book hath placed. 
Live ever you, at least in Fame live ever ! 
Well may the body die, but Fame dies never." 

By some the Alhambra is classed amongst the music 
halls of London, but the mode of entertainment now hold- 
ing the boards of this theatre deserves the title of vaude- 
ville, as the difference between it and the stereotyj)ed Lon- 
don Music Hall is eminent. One of the most popular of 
these plebeian and independent resorts is Evans's celebrated 
concert room, famous for its mutton chops, Welsh rarebits, 
whiskey-punch and brown stout, and its renowned gallery 
of theatrical portraits. At these concerts, which begin 
late and last far into the night, the male element prevails , 
they flock here after the opera and theatres have closed, 
rather an easy process, as the boxes of the concert hall 
may be entered from the adjoining Covent Garden Opera 
House. I have heard the chanting boj^s, or choral singers 
of this establishment highly extolled, and have been eager 
to enjoy their harmony, but lacked the moral fortitude to 
venture upon forbidden ground, — even in a foreign city, — 
where, I believe, all Americans are conceded unlimited li- 



86 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

cense. But I loved to linger in the vicinage hallowed by 
the names of Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Boswell, Goldsmith, 
Addison, and Pope. Close to Evans's is St. Paul's Church, 
not the Cathedral, interesting because in the adjacent 
grounds we saw the grave of Butler, the author of the im- 
mortal poem, "Hudibras;" and of Gibbons, the illustrious 
sculptor, whose flowers carven in wood, needed only color 
and perfume to make them pass for nature. 

St. James Hall, entrance on Piccadilly and Regent 
Street, an attachment of the famous restaurant, is a gor- 
geously decorated room, where the Moore and Burgess 
American Minstrels present to the English a thoroughly 
American plantation jubilee. It is refreshing to see these 
English people enjoying this as a novelty. The Oxford 
Music Hall, the portals of which I ventured to pass, was 
thronged with a motley crowd, comparatively little smok- 
ing and drinking, a cheap place, a dismal repertoire, but 
the audience exceedingly reputable, that is, while I re- 
mained in this bacchanalian rendezvous^ which was only 
long enough to take a peep, and then glad to hurry away. 
For although I had been anxious and curious to see one of 
these sports for the London mob, I was conscious of a 
feeling of self-desecration while my inquisitive longing 
was being gratified. Canterbury Music Hall is on the 
Westminster Bridge Road, across the Thames; the original 
building was the first of this class of carnival in London : 
and Exeter Hall, near Covent Garden, is a better specimen 
of the same type of amusements, as it is also often used 
for meetings of religious associations, oratories, and the- 
ological disputations. 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 87 



LETTER XVIII. 

"Is it not monstrous, tliat this player here, 
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
Could force his soul so to his own conceit, 
That from her working, all his visage warmed, 
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, 
A broken voice, and his whole functions suiting 
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing? 
For Hecuba!" Hamlet. 

London, March, 1878. 

And so I felt, as I sat and saw Henry Irving enact his 
portrait of Louis XI at the Lyceum Theatre. He is wor- 
shipped here as the Roscius of the British stage. While 
the ladies sing praises to his melancholy grace and the 
music of his voice, the critics exhaust adjectives in eulogies 
of ills genius. They do not overrate this English disciple 
of the Greek drama, and I incontinently jnelded to his mag- 
netic influence. I had seen him several weeks before in the 
weird representation, The Bells^ where the hero has bidden 
farewell to content, and dies the victim of a remorseful 
conscience. Irving is a man whose walk and talk are full 
of shadowy forebodings, and well adapted for such a cha- 
racter as the superstitious, suspicious, cruel, and faithless 
King of France. He is not handsome, but possesses the 
charms of intonation, gesture, and manner that come only 
to the finished artist — partial Nature's gifts to her favored 
few. He has a moody and student air, and seems to have 
thought out all his paces and points ; an atmosphere of 
musty books and meditation clings about him. He is at 
once attractive and repellent. He has conned French his- 
tory and the novel of the Scottish story-teller founded upon 
it, and he has studied the illustrated lists of the costumers 
of the time. The manner in which he dressed the character 
honored the author; the facial make-up was as artistic and 
elaborate as the Meg Merreiles of Charlotte Cushman. 

The scenes are all laid at and near the Castle of Plessis- 
les-Tours, where the miserable monarch passed the last 
years of his life, surrounded by a body-guard of soldiers. 
He feared that humanity would be as cruel to him as he 
had been cruel to humanity. He ascended the throne a 
tyrant, determined to subjugate all the nobles to his will. 
He was as wise as he was jealous, but he labored to concen- 
trate all power in his own hands. He selected his coun- 



88 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

sellers from the people, and encouraged commerce and 
industry, a cause to which Jacques Coeur, the merchant 
prince of the former reign, had given such impetus. His 
impulses were low and cunning, and tliough he was a church- 
man, he was tlie type of abject bigotry and superstition. 
He thought he could propitiate the saints with promises as 
he did his fellow-creatures — promises that he never intended 
to redeem — particularly noticeable in his midnight devo- 
tions, when he knelt before the image of the Lady of Clery, 
after supplicating for the fulfilment of all his worldly pro- 
jects. He concludes his prayer, according to Sir Walter 
Scott: "Sweetest Lady, work with thy child, that he will 
pardon all past sins, and one — one little deed that I must 
do this night — nay, it is no sin^ dearest Lady of Clery, no 
sin, but an act of justice privately administered ; for the 
villain is the greatest impostor that ever poured falsehood 
into a prince's ear, and leans besides to the filthy heresy of 
the Greeks. He is not deserving of thy protection ; leave 
him to my care ; and hold it as a good service that I rid 
the world of him, for the man is a necromancer and wizard, 
that is not worth th}' thought and care — a dog, the extinc- 
tion of whose life ought to be of as little consequence in 
thine eyes as the treading out of a spark that drops from 
a lamp or springs from a fire. Think not of tiiis little mat- 
ter, gentlest, kindest Lady, l>ut consider how thou canst 
best aid me in my troubles ! and I here bind my loyal sig- 
net to thy effigy, in token that I will keep word concerning 
the county of Champagne (which, b}' the way, he had pledged 
several times previous), and that this will be the last time 
I will trouble thee in affairs of blood, knowing thou art so 
kind, so gentle, and so tender-hearted." Ah! wily reasoner, 
how well you plead and flatter! And here we see the shrewd 
diplomate — without heart or conscience — in his fortress, 
with none near him but his barber minister, Oliver le Dain ; 
his provost, Tristan I'Ermite ; and his physician, Jacques 
Coitier. He feared to meet his Creator, because he had so 
blackened the life bestowed upon him. 1 recoiled from 
Henry Irving as he played the intriguing, crafty, soulless 
hypocrite, yet found myself melting toward him the next 
moment as he addressed a favorite; his ever}'' tone a sweet 
caress. He is one of those who so sink the actor into the 
character, and so rapidly paint the various phases of life 
that you alternately hate and sympathize with him until 
the curtain drops, when, for the first time you dwell upon 
the creative skill of the consummate artist. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 89 

And for the pleasure of the evening passed with the crafty 
Louis, as interpreted by this gifted young actor, I was 
indebted to our country's good friend in London, Mr. James 
McHenry, who is a zealous patron of the drama, and Henry 
L'ving's special champion. The home of Mr. McHenry, 
Oak Lodge, is a portion of the old Holland estate, Ken- 
sington, where the last Lord Holland, nephew of Charles 
James Fox, died in 1840. Here Fox, Byron, Moore, Addison, 
Sheridan, and all that galaxy of fast and fashionable Whigs 
of the olden time, gathered and held high revelry, played 
their special antics, and plotted their special intrigues, 
making their clubs and the House of Commons, and old 
London itself, resound with the gossip of their frequent 
saturnalias. I looked, or tried to look over the hedges and 
high walls that separated Mr. McHenry's fair demesne from 
this paradise of other days, now hermetically sealed against 
profane ej-es, and deserted by the descendants of the great 
families, who lived and lorded there so long and so long 
ago. The last Ladj^ Holland is still living, but the glory 
of the great place has departed. Traffic and population 
have usurped the lovelj'' domain, for centuries the exclusive 
retreat of the magnates who ruled the camp, the court, the 
senate, and the stage. Mr. McHenry, who paid a large 
] round sum for his corner of this delightful suburb, could 
now sell his property for three or four times what it cost 
him. And I was told, such is the demand for wliat is 
left of the grand old estate, that it will not be long before 
it is surrendered to the rapacious grasp of remorseless 
modern innovation. 

Of the other countless crowded resorts of London, I have 
only to say that we give a much better entertainment at 
home for less money. The best dramatic stock companies 
here are not comparable to those of Philadelphia and New 
York. And frequentlj' when I have paid seven or eight 
shillings for my stall, I wondered if I was not paj'ing for 
the exquisite adornments of the audience chamber, instead 
of the play I had come to witness. In contrast with our 
dollar amusements, fifty cents would be a fair price. True, 
the artistic and architectural appointments of these drama- 
tic palaces surpass anything we have at home. The Cri- 
terion, three stories underground, is a glittering mass of 
gold and eau-de-Nile satin, reached by a stairway panelled 
with encaustic tiles and mirrors; but the successful comedy 
of Pink Dominos, tiiat has alreadj'- passed its 300th repre- 
sentation, I have seen much better acted in America. The 

8* 



90 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Princess Theatre, where Miss Heath nightly harrows up 
the best and tenderest emotions of the public by rehearsing 
the struggles and sins of the beautiful but frail Jane Shore, 
is dismal to the last degree. Had poor Jane borne the 
slightest resemblance to the lady who assumes her role, I 
am loath to believe she could have numbered Edward lY, 
Lord Hastings, and Thomas Lynom, the king's solicitor, 
amongst her devotees. Mammon, a capital commercial com- 
edy-drama at the Duke's, is a charming presentation, with 
Miss Louise Moodie as the heroine. Miss Neilson at the 
Haymarket, is Miss Neilson everywhere ; and so I might 
continue ; and yet all these houses are spacious and inva- 
riably thronged. 

We are apt to regard the present growth of the drama as 
altogether more remarkable than theatrical displays before 
and after the appearance of Shakespeare, and in some re- 
spects the assumption is correct. In the time of Charles 
I-IT, and for many years succeeding, there were no women 
on the stage ; men played women's parts, and at an earlier 
period, at the close of the fifteenth century, passion or 
religious plays ruled the primitive stage, alike in France 
and England. One of these, ^' The Passion of our Saviour," 
"was written so early that the name of the author is lost. 
A writer by the name of Bale, who died in 1563, the year 
before Shakespeare was born, wrote seventeen dramatic 
pieces, some of the titles of which were, " The Baptism of 
Christ," "Christ when He was Twelve Years Old," "The 
Lord's Supper," "Tiie Resurrection," etc. Another by the 
same author, was called " God's Promises," and some of the 
poetry is of a very doubtful character. 

Endless plays were produced, and the absence of all art 
in their representation made it very difficult to show them. 
Great religious quarrels resulted from the religious dramas, 
until finally they were suppressed by the civil governments. 
When Shakespeare fell into the hands of the illustrious mo- 
dern tragedians, of whom Garrick may be called the most 
eminent, women came forth to add to the illustration of his 
and all contemporaneous and succeeding works ; and then 
grew the art of painting, costumes, and that infinite variety 
of scenery and architecture which have made the stage in 
all enlightened nations the most potent ally of public en- 
joyment and social development. Music was equally ad- 
vanced, and the drama, aided and beautified by the presence 
of sweet women, called to its assistance the sister arts, and 
became one of the most delightful instrumentalities for the 
entertainment and improvement of mankind. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 91 



LETTER XIX. 

"O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce 
'Twixt natural son and sire ! thou bright defiler 
Of Hymen's purest bed ! thou valiant Mars ! 
Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer, 
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow 

■ That lies on Dian's lap ! thou visible god. 
That solder'st close impossibilities, 

And mak'st them kiss ! that speak' st with every tongue, 
To every purpose." 

TiMON OP Athens. 

London, March, 1878. 

" For they sa}^, if money go before, all ways do lie open." 
The importance of these words I have learned to realize, 
though I have hardly looked beneath the surface of this 
glittering metropolis. The " saint-seducing gold" is all 
powerful here, as it is at home, and I have already begun 
to wonder what people meant who talked about going 
abroad to economize. Of course one can economize here, 
but he must first learn these old countries, and to gain this 
knowledge he must pa}' for his experience, and generally a 
pretty heavy tax. Then there are those who possess the 
high talent for suffering and starving, and it matters little 
where they go or where they stop, for they have set upon 
a campaign of skimping. Strangers must fee the whole 
kingdom, and this system is reduced to a science. I grant 
you a very little goes a great way. It is not the amount 
to any one that makes the vacuum in the pocket, })ut the un- 
ceasing demand for pennies ; and the pence is what cheats 
the American. With us the cent is the penny always, and 
though we know the fact well, it takes some time for us to 
become accustomed to it, that a shilling is twenty-five 
cents, though twelve pence. The waiter that smiles as you 
give him sixpence, would be content upon one; Cabby 
knows an American at once and trades upon his contempt 
for coppers and his weakness for silver. The Frenchman 
is happy on a sou; the German on a kreuzer or pfennig ; 
the Italian on a centesimi^ and the Spaniard on a real; it 
is ever the smallest coin offered by the English to the 
waiter, but the American disdains anything less than six- 
pence. Gradually I convalesced from the sixpence folly, 
and the London restaurants wrought the radical cure. I 
confess I was captured by a superb dinner — music included 



92 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

— for "three and six," and exclaimed, with Dominie Samp- 
son, "prodigious!" before calculating the other expenses 
attending this epicurean but economical feast. " Three and 
six" are eighty-seven and a half cents; a bottle of red wine 
four shillings ($1.00); and sixpence for the waiter, swells 
your account to $1.50 each if two are dining. The fee for 
the attendant does not remain at the option and generosity 
of the diners, but is charged in the bill, and then of course, 
you are expected — no! not expected, but obliged to hand 
the waiter a small gratuity for himself. If you take a 
hansom to reach any one of the swell restaurants, your 
outlay for dinner will net quite $2.00; what with the lodg- 
ing at the hotel, and breakfast, you discover that you are 
living at about five dollars a day, or more than it would 
cost at the "Continental" or "Fifth Avenue." No one 
dines here without wine, and the tariff equals the American 
prices, for the Englishman is also obliged to render impost 
to his French neighbor across the channel for the beuvt^age. 

There are many chop houses, and pot houses, and grill 
rooms, where a gentleman may dine well upon a chop, a 
snack, with vegetables and bread, for six or eight-pence, 
but these are scarcely the places for a lady. They are 
mostly found in the city; Strand, Fleet Street, Cheapside, 
Cannon Street, and Ludgate Hill. I have made a tour of 
the better class restaurants, and have finally anchored at 
the " Cafe Royal," Regent Quadrant, where I took my first 
dinner in London many weeks ago. The English are the 
vilest cooks on this round globe; the talent for ruining all 
viands they touch seems plenarily developed, and I hailed 
the French cafe as a harvest and a home. Here we are 
served with a savory meal of chicken, vegetables, salad, 
cheese, bread and butter, ice-cream and wine, for the very 
modest sum of one dollar. Our gai^gon is a blue-bearded 
Italian, called Tony, who, besides suppljung our delicious 
bite, is as polite as a dancing-master, as active as an acro- 
bat, and lies like a lawj^er. 

Perhaps you are saying "fat paunches have lean pates, 
and dainty bits make rich the ribs, but bank 'rout quite the 
wits;" but this subject of food has been weighing heavily 
upon my — brain (?), and I must deliver myself of it. The 
other afternoon I strolled along the monumental splen- 
dors of Parliament Street, the House of Commons and the 
House of Lords, past old Westminster Abbey, through St. 
James's Park, past the great India House, through Water- 
loo Square, and by the four colossal lions of Landseer guard- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 93 

ing the towering column of Nelson, in Trafalgar Square. 
What a throng! and what a medley of wealth and povert}'! 
Beggars pleading for pennies at every step, and the gay 
and festive young soldiers of the Queen's Guard, with their 
jaunty little caps tilted on one side, short jackets and close- 
fitting trowsers, each one as straight as an arrow, and each 
with a bonne, and each bonne with a baby. Then the no- 
bility rolling along in their luxurious carriages with liv- 
eried footmen and outriders, it was a panorama indeed ! 
We lingered on Oxford Street to look into the dazzling 
shop windows filled with objects of virtu^ gold and silver 
ornaments, and a perfect wilderness of female parapher- 
nalia. Shortl}^ we emerged into High Holbor.), and then 
to the famous restaurant of the same name where we dined. 
Under the roof of this vast establishment there are many 
mansions; the grand salon, the duke's salon, the ladies' 
salon, Lincoln's inn buffet, and the grill room, besides an 
infinit}^ of cloak-rooms and private dining-rooms. On en- 
tering the grand salon at The Holborn, for 6 p. m. table 
d^hote, I thought I was in a fairy palace ; it was as light as 
a flood of gas and wax-candles could make it; the crystal 
and gilt chandeliers were reflected in a hundred mirrors; 
the air was filled with the perfume of flowers, — for on each 
small table was placed a bouquet, — the silvery tinkle of 
the fountains' spray as it dropped upon the marble basin 
beneath, with music and the song of birds; music taken 
from the operas and executed by master hands. W^e dined 
in the lower balcony, behind the shadow and within the 
glow of crimson drapery, from where we could see the well- 
dressed guests in the large hall just below, and those around 
us ; the waiters seeming as courtly as the company ; and 
this was the menu: 

Soups. 
Puree of Game. Consomme with Italian Paste. 

Fish. 
Fillets of Sturgeon, Indian Sauce. Turbot, Lobster Sauce. 

Entrees. 
Turtle Croquettes, with Mushrooms. Fricassee of Babbit. 

Roast. 
Ribs of Beef, with Horseradish. 

Sweets. 

Rhubarb Tart. Dom Pedro Jelly. 

Genoise Glaceau Kirsch. 



94 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Ices. 
Orange. Ratafiar 

Cheese. French Salad. 

Dessert. 

Apples. Oranges. Pippins. Olives. 

Almonds and Raisins. 

And all of this graceful and elegant feast for three and six. 
Yet I have heard many American gentlemen say they were 
obliged to double up on the European table cfhote^ as the 
usual supply is insufficient. 

At the New Viaduct Hotel, Holborn Viaduct, under the 
auspices of Spiers & Pond, the restaurant princes here, an 
elegant dinner is supplied, but not for three and six; that 
is one of the silvery resorts. The St. James, on Piccadilly, 
in connection with the concert rooms, serves almost as good 
a meal, but not the other accessories, as the High Holborn, 
for the same sum. At the Criterion there is also a six 
o'clock table dViote, but it is still more expensive. The 
Burlington, on Regent Street, is conspicuous, costly, with 
dinners a la carte; the interior adornments are strikingly 
beautiful, but we suddenly retreated when we were told we 
should have to wait at least half an hour for a small dinner. 
Mr. Blanchard, of the Burlington, is also proprietor of a 
less pretentious establishment on less pretentious Beak 
Street, where we obtained a very fair meal at rather a 
reasonable price. Verrey's, on Regent Street, is select 
and expensive, and the resort of fashionable ladies during 
the shopping hours. Simpson's, on the Strand, is famous 
and constantly thronged, so it requires considerable elec- 
tioneering to secure a separate table, but I regard the 
cooking inferior to the others I have tried. Here roast 
beef and mutton, with potatoes and Brussels sprouts, are 
the staples; the dissector in white apron, jacket, and paper 
cap rolls a large barrow upon wheels to the side of your 
table, and there carves whatever you may choose from a 
huge round of beef or mutton. The Pall Mall, in Pall 
Mall, is the aristocratic restaurant of this extremely wealthy 
and noble quarter. It is pervaded by a solemn and stifling 
hush. Just out of Carleton Gardens and St. James Park, 
and in the midst of the clubs — the Athenaeum, United 
Service, the Reform Club, the Traveller's, the Carlton, and 
Army and Navy — it is at once the rendezvous of the peer 
and poet, the scholar and the soldier, the man of play and 
the man of pleasure. The table dliote at the principal 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 95 

hotels, as the Grosvenor, Langhara, Midland, and Charing 
Cross, are always expensive, never less than six or seven 
shillings, frequently ten. 

The most costly and exclusive hotels of London are not 
the largest and most prominent where the greater portion 
of the tide of travel settles. They are to be found in quiet 
sequestered districts, off from the din of the mercantile 
world ; outside, the counterpart of a large private residence, 
plain and spiritless; inside, palatial; and they are never 
advertised. 

Much has been written of the quality and quantity of 
milk and cream in England, yet the price and dearth of 
ice cream is one of the points to be observed. It is gener- 
ally a very inferior product, when it is found at all, and 
sixpence for so much as might be put into a Sauterne 
glass, frequently a shilling; this depends in what end of 
the town it is bought. The best is to be had at Gunter's, 
in Berkeley Square, confectioners to Her Majesty ; but 
believe me, that ice cream has received a too liberal dose 
of arrowroot or corn starch. Eighty-seven cents for half 
a dozen of the most diminutive raw oysters you ever saw. 
One dollar for a dish of clear turtle soup. Sevent3^-five 
cents for one portion, and a very small one, of lobster 
salad. Two dollars for a capon. These figures are quite 
conclusive that the luxuries of the table are procurable at 
far lower rates at home. And to tliose who have been 
harboring the false conception of going abroad to econo- 
mize — dispel it at once! 



96 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER XX. 

"This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, 
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-paradise ; 
This fortress built by nature for herself, 
Against infection and the hand of war ; 
This happy breed of men, this little world ; 
This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
Or as a moat defensive to a house. 
Against the envy of less happy lands ; 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, 
Feared by their breed, and famous by their birth, 
Renowned for their deeds as far from home 
(For Christian service and true chivalry) 
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry, 
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son," 

Shakespeare. 

London, March, 1878. 

In this cloudy country, a "constitutional" is almost as 
necessary to health as food and sleep, and the '• constitu- 
tional" of the Eno^lish is a long- stroll or stride of many 
hours or miles. The practice accounts for the immense 
feet of the females and the stalwart forms of the males. 
An English lady in her walking costume is more an ob- 
ject of oppressive respectability than of attraction. One 
rapidly grows into the customs of a country. I have 
already learned to prefer walking to riding, even in rough 
weather, and what enhances the pleasure are the thousand 
curious sights and scenes which make our jaunts a series 
of panoramic views. A stranger in London cannot fully 
enjoy the metropolis from a closed omnibus, a four-wheeler, 
or a hansom, and, of course, not from the underground 
railway ; therefore we have adopted the Baj-ard Taylor 
fashion of taking views afoot. 

So to-day we concluded to walk from Westminster to 
Tower Hill. Of the tower with its many black and bloody 
legends ; its hoary walls and machicolated battlements ; 
its ancient moat and Traitor's Gate ; its resplendent halls 
of armor and chambers of jewels ; its bastions and donjon, 
and its shroud of past gloom, casting shadows over the 
present sunshine of intelligence and liberty — I will not 
talk; it is a hackneyed as well as horrible story. But of 
the approach and immediate vicinity of this mighty monu- 
ment of bygone vice, slavery, and barbarity, I trust I may 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 97 

dilate without being tedious. The sufferings of Lady Jane 
Grey, and her husband, Guildford Dudlej^, Walter Raleigh, 
Archbishop Laud, Lord Lovat, and the many others, are 
the threadbare tale of every school-book. This palace and 
prison is tiie familiar cenotaph of the ages, and one picture 
of it suffices for all time. Not so the environs of the ven- 
erable pile, for while it remains the same, time with them 
is ever working^ chansfes. 

From the Royal Exchange where the bronze equestrian 
statue of the Duke of Wellington stands in all its conscious 
opulence of the $50,000 it cost, we crossed to the Bank of 
England ; here I was unable to resist a peep. £lOO shares 
are at par $500, eacii has risen to £230 or $1150. The 
yearly salaries of the officers are $1,100,000. The bank 
manages the national debt, which amounts to $4,000,000,000. 
"The old lady in Threadneedle Street" — as the English 
call their bank — is an affluent dowager, as her capital 
equals nearly $80,000,000. Here I saw the wonderful 
clock with the sixteen dials, so that a face may be seen from 
the sixteen distinct offices of the bank, through which all 
day long wild crowds are rushing to and fro. Here they 
shovel the bullion, and weigh the gold pieces, instead of 
counting them ; it all seems very strange to us, but mis- 
takes occur rarely. With a scoop, they cash a check for 
$1000 in a second. Tiie bank notes are printed by a sin- 
gular process, and forgery is rendered impossible. The 
hordes of people, and the busy officials, the cries in the 
street, the din of traffic, the dull, heavy roar of the un- 
ceasing ocean of hauling, make a terrestrial pandemonium. 
And yet the order of the management of this great temple 
of Mammon is a marvel of the acre. 

To the east, we have Cornhill, a thoroughfare of cheap 
shops, counting-houses, tumble-down taverns, insurance 
offices, historic haunts, and even poetical reminiscences ; 
for it was in this quarter that Gray was born, and lived 
years ago, and Daniel De Foe — the author of Robinson 
Crusoe — carried on the business of stocking-maker, in 
1*702. But who shall depicture the Stock Exchange ? It 
was a wild day (Saturday) there! A medley of crazy 
rioters. Frequently the police are necessary to disperse 
the mob gathered to buy and sell stocks, tobacco, pepper, 
indigo, and drugs, and the broker is alwa3'^s there to effect 
the barter. It was a clear day, but the air was rude, and 
the tumult ruder as we endeavored to thread our way 
through this modern Babel. 
9 



98 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

All trades are plied, all classes mingle, all languages are 
spoken. You are thrust here and there by the extended 
elbows of a ruffian, by a greasy flsh-basket, a heedless bo}^ 
wheelbarrows, boxes, and wagons. Suddenly there is a 
halt midway in the mad tumult; there is a blockade in the 
torrent of travel on sidewalk and highway, if, indeed, you 
can distinguish them, as at such a time horses and wagons 
are driven on the pavement, regardless of human life; and 
then the air reverberates with the shouts of drivers, por- 
ters, beggars, hawkers, guardians of the peace, fishwomen, 
candy and fruit sellers, importunate showmen, and ped- 
dlers. At first 1 was provoked that I had consented to 
venture in the midst of the human and inhuman menag- 
erie, then my mood changed to one of solicitude for my 
raiment, for my premonition was that I sliould be vehe- 
mently divested of it, and the tertium quid was a silent 
prayer for my life. No man tarried for his neighbor, so I 
abandoned myself to the current, to gaze upon the strange 
concourse, and watch the passions on the faces of the mul- 
titude, and stare into the kaleidoscope of the windows. 
If the picture on the highway was exciting and outre, it 
was novel in the depositories that flanked the pavements. 
Here were shelves of gold and silver coins, next door 
masses and mazes of old statuary, paintings, engravings, 
musty books, and bric-a-brac. Past brokers, law-offices, 
and antique houses, we were carried into Leadenhall Street, 
the place of markets of meat, poultry, and especially hides. 
Another world as exclusive in its devotion to creature 
comforts as what I have just left is to money and specula- 
tion. Here is the vast sepulchre, or confined subterranean 
sea, of light French and German wines; the cellars of H. 
R. Williams & Co., extending beneatli the range of the en- 
tire markets, and then we emerged into Lombard Street, 
the region of tiie golden gods of Europe and America, and 
the same where the Longobards of Edward II 's reign met 
to transact their aff'airs. All here was heavy, and gloomy, 
and strong ; the great dealers of finance seem to avoid 
glitter. Odd it is that all tiiese treasure-houses are sur- 
rounded by marts for the sale of food and grain ; and here 
we came upon Mark and Mincing Lanes, the corn markets 
of the world. 

The scene at Billingsgate great fish market and wharf was 
grotesque and bizarre to the last degree. What a melange 
of curiously dressed men, and still more curiousl}' attired 
women ! What an atmosphere and multitude of odd-look- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 99 

ing and odd-named fish. This wholesale market was made 
open and free for all classes of fish in 1699, and all the 
oviparous inhabitants of the water that are imported in 
British vessels, fresh or cured, are free of duties. The fish 
in this market are sold by count, except salmon and eels ; 
oysters are sold by measure, and no fish are sold on Sunday, 
with the exception of mackerel. Much has been written 
of the peculiar characteristics of the fish-mongers. Time 
has evidently improved them, as I heard none of the ri- 
baldry and vituperation of the olden days, but they are 
much rougher, ruder, and more boisterous than the same 
order at home. 

The Thames is to London, life, food, health, and enjoy- 
ment. Without its ceaseless current there would be no 
world's metropolis. However regarded it is vital to Lon- 
don existence. Venice is not more dependent upon her 
canals, than is London upon the Thames; nor is Holland 
more indebted to her dykes, and the estuaries of the sea 
that penetrate into, cleanse, and improve her cities. And 
the very region I have been visiting to-day proves how in- 
dispensable the Thames is to the city it divides. It is 
bordered by stately edifices, and they produce a most impres- 
sive effect. The custom-house is solid, capacious, and most 
extensive; the long room is 190 by 60 feet, and has an alti- 
tude of 55 feet, in the centre ; some conception of its extent 
may be formed, but the rush and crush of business cannot 
be idealized. Here I had my first real insight of English 
commerce. Even Liverpool, with its forest of masts, and 
wilderness of docks, did not impress me like these mighty 
storehouses on the Thames, that hold the produce of the 
Mediterranean and America, of the Orient and the Occident. 
I was bewildered by the scene, yet I labored to retain a few 
facts of this Trade Colossus. The St. Catherine Docks 
cost nearly nine millions of dollars, and the wine vaults of 
the Eastern Docks cover an underground area of 890,545 
feet ; one vault alone a space of seven acres ! On the India 
Docks six millions of dollars were expended in the begin- 
ning, seventy-nine years ago, and they now include three 
hundred acres of land and water. 

Such is the opulence of London, of its world-wide aflftli- 
ations, of the endless varieties of its traflfic. All the deli- 
cacies, refinements, luxuries, necessities, inventions and 
products of the human race, are collected in their gross 
and rude virgin state. It was a wild blending of foreign 
sounds, smells, and costumes. There were many ladies 



100 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

and travellers from distant ports, tradesmen, and many 
like myself taking notes. We had reached the limit of 
this historical and commercial labyrinthine locale^ and the 
melancholy walls of the Tower burst upon us from the hilL 
We joined the democratic brigade commanded by a " beef- 
eater," with faded and flaunting ribbons, and proceeded 
to view that of which we had so often read. 



LETTER XXI. 

"Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 

That crown the wat'ry glade. 
Where grateful Science still adores 

Her Henry's holy shade ; 
And ye that from the stately brow 
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below 

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey. 
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 
Wanders the hoary Thames along 

His silver winding way." 

Thomas Gray. 

London, March, 1878. 

The Thames, that vital artery of the English capital, 
always seemed chiefly important as a commercial stream, 
till George Eliot, in Daniel Deronda, glorified it into ro- 
mance and beauty. Taking its rise near Cirencester, it 
passes Windsor, Hampton Court, Twickenham, Fulham, 
Chelsea, Riciimond, and so on to London, where its shores 
are crowned b}'^ the oldest religious, political, charitable, 
commercial, and literary monumeuts. Although the Thames 
is often repulsive viewed from the many bridges that span 
it, or from the new and costly embankments, it seems to 
purify as we penetrate into rural England. AH along its 
banks are the silent abodes of blissful wealth. The great 
novelist has opened new views of its pastoral beauties, of 
the lovely regions it traverses, of the hamlets and estates, 
palaces and retreats, battle-fields, colleges, schools, and 
churches, it has rolled through and by for centuries. As 
you travel j^ou find inland towns and villages connected 
with London by rail and sail down to the North Sea, where 
the river empties its tribute of darksome waters; its mar- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 101 

gin is lined with punts and barges plying out into the cur- 
rent. We see it at intervals through the trees a mere coil- 
ing ribbon, gradually expanding into a river navigable for 
vessels of 1400 tons. These towns are flanked b}'' fine 
hotels, houses, lordly domains, and public gardens. As 
you approach London you realize that the Upper Thames 
has become the rendezvous of fasliion, frolic, high life, low 
life, and the ten thousand secrets of a huge metropolis. 
Here they are largely concealed and steadily increase. 
The Thames at London is pregnant of dark mysteries and 
darker tragedies. Few travellers follow its course and 
rarely see its country side in nature. They visit the Docks, 
Tower, Tunnel, and Custom-house, linger on the bridges, 
and stop at Windsor, Richmond, and Kew. They are thus 
only partially prepared for the endless wealth of London, 
proved by the superb memorials on its river's banks, 
brought into bold relief by the sky, and these evidences 
strengthen their belief in the words of the old Pope, who 
a century ago said, "If the treasury of Philip Augustus 
had been put up for sale London could have bought it." 
Then they dwell upon the fountain of this incalculable 
wealth — the ocean — and of the Thames, its tributary, and 
think of what the martyr Sir Walter Raleigh said, " He 
w'ho commands the sea commands the trade of tlie world; 
he who commands the trade of the world commands the 
riches of the world, and consequently the world itself;" 
but there! I am transgressing my woman's province. I 
have no desire to play the savant,, nor decoy you into the 
belief that I have all the mots and aphorisms of the eccle- 
siastical, political, and poetic Solomons, at my finger 
tips. No ! I spare you the infliction. 

So with the vision of Daniel Deronda in mind, just as 
the sun was sinking behind the hills, and night was wrap- 
ping nature in her dusky cloak, and the little stars were 
coming out one by one like so many eyes to witness his 
rescue of the melancholy Mirah who had wandered to the 
river edge, where it slopes gently from Kew Gardens, and 
the willow bushes stand thick and close to the margin, I 
projected my tour of the silent highway, with Windsor 
Palace, Eton, Kew Gardens, Richmond, Bushy Park, and 
Hampton Court in prospect. Next morning was balmy 
and soft, though the month March, and as we passed 
under the darlc arches of the orreat bridg-es, the river was 
sluggish and opaque, the tall spires lost their heads in the 
misty clouds, and the dim masses of stone fretwork were 

9* 



102 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

indistinctly outlined against the hazy sk3^; but tlie fishers' 
boats, pleasure barges, and commercial craft, were steadily 
ploughing the water}' wa^^ The Oxford and Cambridge 
lads were in their cockle-shell skiffs, practising for the 
prize competition which will take place in about two 
weeks. We rested upon our oars clo^e to the (ireat 
Western Railway Bridge and viewed Windsor, with its 
ghostly towers and wooded heights, the famous old beeches 
with outstretched arms and gnarled trunks, that tell us of 
the "years of generations." At the feet of these old mon- 
archs is the baby crocus in her cradle of soft, fresh green; 
she pushes back her blanket, and lifts her sweet sad face 
to the pale English sun, but a chill gale blows over the 
bleak Welsh hills, and the new-born crocus shivers and 
bends her head to her mother — Earth. The willow bushes 
and long rank grass are dipping into the river, which 
sparkles as the struggling sun touches its ripples, the 
anglers are sporting with their rods, and a flock of white 
sheep are grazing on the young verdure. Yonder on the 
opposite bank is Eton, the famous school of preliminary 
instruction for the sons of noblemen and gentry. The 
main portion of the youths under tuition here are oppi- 
dans, numbering nearly nine hundred, the number of the 
King's scholars who reside within the walls is limited to 
seventy; the narrow lanes and IcA^el highways of the town 
are full of these oddly dressed oppidans. As we passed 
many of the lads were out on the greensward, and in these 
sporting youths I saw the future British poets and states- 
men, and thought of their predecessors, Walpole, Boling- 
broke. Fielding, Gra}'^, Cliatham, Fox, and Wellington, 
who had gambolled upon the same lawn. 

We turned from the chalk hills of Windsor, and pulled 
toward Hampton Court, past the royal and densely-wooded 
estates, gladdened by sunny trout-brooks, where the fallow- 
deer were browsing, and where the dark English roads are 
bordered by glossy hedges, where the cattle wade among 
the mossy and slimy stones at the river's brink, within the 
shadow of the tall elms, where my lord rides out upon his 
palfry in buckskin or corduroy, while his retainers lay down 
the hoe and sickle as noon-tide tolls from the curfew tower. 

The first glimpse we caught of the palace made it appear 
like a small town. We lingered upon Hampton Bridge, as 
we had been told to do, to gain a view of the Gothic turrets 
of Wolsey, and then passed the great stone portals guarded 
by the lions, and adorned by the armorial symbols and tro- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 103 

phies of the third William. Through a neglected court or 
avenue that lay between the barracks — a long row of low, 
dilapidated brick structures on the left, and heavy, decay- 
ing incongruous buildings on the right — we reached the 
regal home of Ciiarles I and II, where the workings of 
nature and art go hand in hand, where countless names of 
fame are indissoluble^ carved, where cling the traditions of 
the romance and tragedy of three centuries, where the 
saintly but sybaritic Wolsey held high revel, and his 
thousand satellites were housed, where the illustrious 
scriptural tapestries still embellish the walls of the great 
hall. They are in a perfect state of "preservation and illus- 
trate the eight epochs of the life of Abraham. They are 
elaborate specimens of art, "the higher lights being worked 
in gold." Each one is bordered by an intricate design in 
arabesque, where figures, fruits, flowers, and vines inter- 
mingle, emblematic of the lessons the subject is intended 
to teach. Need I recount the high-pitched roof and 
pendants, the stained glass windows bearing the titles of 
the six wives of "bluff king Hal?" the banners, and arms, 
and ciphers of the nobles? the court and chapel? the 
king's staircase with its essentially French frescoes by 
Antonio Yerrio? The adornments are striking and exu- 
berant, but I am told by superior judgment, thej'' will not 
sustain criticism. We wandered through the royal bed- 
chambers and boudoirs^ and long succession of art galleries, 
where each portrait is an eloquent legend of the past. From 
the centre window in the queen's drawing-room we looked 
out upon the garden below, with its brilliant border and 
level yellow gravel paths, the terraces and mounds of soft 
green turf, stone vases, a mass of luxuriant bloom, dancing 
fountains, and through the vista of a long line of lofty and 
venerable trees, shadowing a footpath, there is a lake orna- 
mented with statues and sparkling jets d^eau. Across the 
highroad to Kingston we entered Bushby Park, with its 
long colonnades of chestnuts and limes, several centuries 
old, and not one of them seems to be allowed to grow an 
inch above the other, making a mighty and mazj^ arbor of 
green. 

A short row brought us to the celebrated Kew Gardens, 
extending along the Thames. This extensive collection 
of living flowers and plants of all kinds, is now national 
property, but nevertheless we could not forget the time 
when it was leased to the Prince of Wales, son of George 
II, afterward George III, nor that the cottage is still pre- 



104 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

served as it was left by the ill-fated Queen Charlotte. At 
l^reseiit the chief interest centres in its gardens and botani- 
cal treasures, said to be the most famous in the world. How 
soft and velvety the turf 1 How capacious and well-ordered 
the green-houses, nurseries, and conservatories, and how 
wonderful in summer the open beds of various colored 
flowers, exotic and otherwise, gathered from every land 
under the sun, and cured and cultivated by all the resources 
of science and of genius. To this lovel}^ resort continuous 
and countless crowds repair from multitudinous London, 
by daily boat and rail Kew Gardens are open every day 
to the public after one o'clock. Famous Richmond — the 
Tivoli of Entrland — is a sail of a few moments from Kew, 
a large town with a population of over 15,000, and beauti- 
fully placed on the right bank of the Thames. Its park 
and bridge, and palatial surroundings, and glorious per- 
spective, will live ever in my memory. The muse of history 
has lingered long and written much upon this favorite 
place. Near by Pope and Walpole lived for many 3'ears, 
and here myriads gather during the fine days to enjo}'^ the 
exquisite scenery, to walk through the historic parks, to 
punt on the romantic river, or to regale themselves upon 
the costly dinners at the Star and Garter^ an experience 
we were fain to avoid, being unwilling to pay for mere 
form and style, when we could procure an equally satisfac- 
tovy repast at one of the less pretentious inns. Our hostel, 
the Talbot^ was "neat but not gaud}^" We had to wait 
for quite awhile for our steak and potatoes, and while doing 
so, witnessed one of those exhibitions which I regret to say 
are too common in England, a rather decent young lady 
accompanied by her swain, both considerably worse for 
too frequent potations. The food was good, and we were 
ready for it, and we did not complain as we paid our nine 
shillings, feeling it would be double the amount at the more 
silvery Star and Garter. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 105 



LETTER XXII. 

"And throned immortal by his side, 

A woman sits with eye sublime, 
Aspasia, all his spirit's bride ; 

But, if their solemn love were crime. 
Pity the beauty and the sage, 
Their crime was in their darkened age. 

He perished, but his wreath was won ; 

He perished in his height of fame : 
Then sunk the cloud on Athens' sun, 

Yet still she conquered in his name. 
Filled with his soul, she could not die ; 
Her conquest was Posterity !" Ceoly. 

London, April, 1878. 

Barring the noble (?) classes who come upon the stage 
of life with their titles generally more developed than their 
limbs, the most exalted positions in England are held oy 
those who have won renown by their literary efforts. By 
no other assumption, howsoever lofty, may one claim an 
entree to the exclusive circle of sa7\g hleu^ as potent as 
those whose stockings are of the corresponding hue. Of 
this class " George Eliot" crowns the lettered heights. 
Marian Evans, the original of this male pesudonyme, is 
now about lift}' -eight. She was born in Warwickshire, the 
daughter of an humble curate, and afterward adopted by a 
wealthy clerg^'man, who lavishly educated his little protege. 
But her astounding mental expansion grew out of her tute- 
lage under the philosopher, Herbert Spencer, with whom 
she studied French, German, and Italian, music, art, and 
metaphysics, after she had finished at the academy, where 
onl}' the foundation stone was laid of her great learning. 
She is the worshipped Calliope here, notwithstanding her 
mesalliance with the celebrated George Henry Lewes, who 
sincerel}'- loved and honored her. She has no attractions 
of face, but her mind overrules all else, and though much 
of the eloquent and peculiar phraseology, which has gained 
for her so vast an audience, has been attributed to her con- 
stant association with Lewes' philosophy, it was her estab- 
lished style before she assumed the voluntary fetters of that 
mental and sacred fellowship. Her first literary attempt — 
a translation — was not made until she was twenty-six, and 
her first novel was publislied twelve years afterwards. 
Within a later period she has written several poems that 



106 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

would have made the fame of any other struggling aspirant, 
but have added nothing to that of the great novelist, and 
are comparatively unknown. George Henry Lewes is her 
senior by only three years, and tliough his first days of 
student-life were steeped in anatomy and physiology, he 
afterward wrote fiction, and later became a scientific zealot, 
and has ever since attracted attention by the ability of his 
psychological dissertations. I was tempted to study the 
surrounding country of the Thames by George Eliot's 
inspired descriptions, and this led to my meditations on 
the other female writers of London. 

Miss Mary Elizabeth Braddon, the daughter of a con- 
tributor to the old sporting magazines — which accounts 
for her heroine, Aurora Floyd, having a predilection for 
jocke3^s and the pleasures of the turf, carrying a betting- 
book, and indulging in such literature as BelVs Life — was 
born in Soho Square over forty-one years ago. Still cor- 
responding under her maiden name, she has married a 
wealthy gentleman and lives in affluence. She is a pro- 
digious worker, and her novels, plays, and current contribu- 
tions to periodical literature, are popular and remunerative. 
She is the editress of the Belgravia^ a monthly magazine 
of the type of our Galaxy. Her publications have not 
only enriched the authoress, but as adapted to the stage 
have proven a source of emolument to actors and managers. 

Mrs. Henry Wood, the daughter of Thomas Price, a glove 
manufacturer, is about sixty years old. For many years 
the editress of the Argosy,, a sixpenny monthly and favor- 
ite of fiction readers, she has been eclipsed by the brighter 
luminaries, George Eliot and Miss Braddon. How many 
tears have been shed over the wayward and misled Lady 
Isabel in East Lynne^ and other equally hapless heroines 
of her dramatized works! 

One of the oldest English authoresses and artists is Mrs. 
Anna Eliza Bray. She studied art under the guidance of 
Mr. Stothard, whose son she married in 1818. Their con- 
genial life of study and travel was fated to be brief, for 
scarcely three years had passed when he was killed. His 
great labor. The Monumental Effigies of Gi^eat Britain^ 
was completed by his widow, who shortly after married the 
Rev. Mr. Bray, the author of several theological and poet- 
ical books. 

Another of these brave women living in London is Flo- 
rence Nightingale, more eminent for her noble philanthro- 
pies in peace and war, though she has written much upon 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. lOt 

charitable and sanitaiy subjects. She received all the ad- 
vantages of a complete education, but her life mission has 
been to alleviate physical and moral distress. She may be 
justly called the idol of the good people of England. 
Though she rarely goes out now, this lady has a claim 
upon our gratitude for lier unselfish sacrifices for suffering 
humanity. Surrounded by all the luxuries of wealth and 
refinement, still her heart beats warmly for the afflicted. 
She has expended immense sums from her private means, 
and a few years ago, when $250,000 were voted to her by 
the public in recognition of her splendid services in the 
military hospitals in the Crimea, she established with that 
fund an institution for the "training and employment of 
nurses." And now, after a life abounding in such examples 
of royal munificence, she relapses, in the autumn of her 
days, into restful comfort. 

Another of the toiling ladies of London is Miss Amelia 
Blandford Edwards. She is about forty-seven, and a de- 
scendant of the Walpole family, as yet unmarried, I believe. 
She has written many novels and juvenile books, as well as 
being a constant contributor to five or six magazines. 

But no woman in all England, with the exception of the 
Queen, has had more deserved and greater honors than 
Angela Georgiana, Baroness Burdette-Coutts, wlio won 
fame by the liberal use of her large fortune ; tlie greater 
portion of it she inherited from her mother, Sophia Coutts, 
who married Sir Francis Burdette, an effective Parliament- 
ary orator, and the " idol of the London populace." The 
Baroness is about sixt^^-five, and was created a peeress in 
her own right, in June, 18Y1. Her wealth is as boundless 
as her generosity, and her features as conspicuously homely 
as those of the Premier. With $250,000 she endowed three 
colonial bishoprics in British colonies. With lavish hands 
she bestows money upon her favorite, the Church of Eng- 
land, but to institutions of science, charity, education, dis- 
cover}^, and art, she is in a like manner liberal She is 
equally solicitous for the advancement of the drama and 
music. Henry Irving is her chosen friend, and a braver, 
more modest, whole-souled woman does not exist. 

One of the facts that have ever interested me is the 
amount of work done by literary'- and professional women 
in America and England, and, indeed, in every part of the 
world. The labors of George Sand, Madame de Stael, 
Madame de Sevigne, in France; Mrs. Stowe, Julia Ward 
Howe, Louisa Alcott, Anna Dickinson, in America, and the 
countless thinkers and writers of England, are prodigious. 



108 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER XXIII. 

"What hid'st tliou in tliy treasure-caves and cells, 
Thou hollow sounding and mysterious main ? — 
Pale glistening pearls and rainbow-color'd shells, 

Bright things which gleam unrecked-of and in vain ! 
Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea ! 
We ask not much from thee." 

Hemans. 

London, April, 1878. 

We set out for Hastings in a burst of sunshine, but alas ! 
our bright experience was short-lived. The gray clouds 
lowered, the first drops pattered against the window-pane 
of our carriage. We hoped for a favoral)le wind that might 
chase away the threatening storm. But no! tlie atmosphere 
was ominous, and at length the storm broke in all its fury. 
Unlike ours in spring, at home, tiie tempest did not purify 
the air ; for several days after, the heavens were overcast. 
Why did this particular war of the elements make such a 
deep impression upon me? Perhaps because I was at a 
foreign seaside ! Perhaps because 1 had anticipated glory 
and met only gloom ! But I did not sit down to moralize, 
and there is " something too much of this." 

Hastings is three hours' distant from London by rail. 
Tlie first station of note after leaving London Bridge, is 
Chiselhurst, familiar as the retreat of Napoleon III and 
Eug(^nie ; the scene of his death and burial, and since the 
growth and peace of the Republic the restful harbor of the 
beautiful Empress. Then on we dasiied througli emerald 
pasture lands and cultivated farms, smiling roadsides framed 
by glossy, luxuriant hedges, and past the hills, veiled with 
Nature's cobwebs, where nestle the white cottages and the 
rude barns. At Tunl)ridge Wells, an ancient and famous 
inland watering-place, an humble clergyman, who had been, 
a pleasant compagnon de voyage^ possessing apparently 
plenty of brains and little gold, left us. Then our route 
gravitated gradually toward the sea. The air was full of 
the smell of salt from the brackish inlets, and over the wide 
expanse of moorland I saw the naked downs bordering the 
Channel. From the station we rode along the parade to 
the Marine Hotel facing the ocean, which was calm enough, 
but the skies were not bright, the rain was falling in tor- 
rents, and the air was soft and warm. I had been anxious 
to see one of these winter seaside resorts upon the southern 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 109 

coast, where London society rushes to escape the black 
fogs, where the ocean is as level as the Delaware in June, 
and the people make gardens in tlie open air at Christmas. 
I knew the town must be bizarre and picturesque, and de- 
termined to brave wind and weatlier as soon as I had re- 
galed m3'self witli a substantial English dinner. Beneath 
my front window lay the gray crested waters of the great 
main, while close to the rear rose a huge boulder, groined 
by the finger of Time. The ocean is as fascinating to me 
as a cemetery. The comparison may appear to you far- 
fetched, and the taste eccentric ; but, nevertheless, whether 
it be to toss up on the heaving breast, saunter upon the 
sands, climb the cliffs and jutting crags of the one, while 
my heart sings second to the mournful melody of the eter- 
nal ebb and flow, or to linger by the silent and restful graves 
of the other, it is the same lesson of eternitj^ 

Wlien Pluvius hid his weeping e3^es behind a temporary 
screen, I ventured out into this model sea and mountain 
town, l34ng partly at the base, and partly upon the accliv- 
ity of the range of steep hills that shelters it from the 
northern winds. I started in search of an old friend who 
I heard was wintering in the soft and genial cliniate for 
her health, and as I w^as referred to one location after an- 
other, and numbers innumerable, I studied the beauty of 
the costlj^ and aristocratic little houses upon the velvety 
terraces, the windows filled with flowers blossoming in bou- 
quets, the squares fresh and radiant; meanwhile I was 
being sprinkled in the most liberal manner by the treach- 
erous god, and oh, great spirit of Fashion, pity mel 1 had 
on my swell clothes. 

I rose from one narrow^ street to another, and another, 
and another, sometimes by a few steps, and sometimes by 
a gentle ascent as they meandered around the old hills; 
very quaint and very odd are these sinuous avenues over 
the bold cliffs. In the higher part of the town, 1 found 
the atmosphere more bracing and American. I confess I 
had a full satiety of humidity. These English are like 
fish ; they enjoy the water, and the damp, and cold, and 
fog; undaunted they waded through the hilly town, um- 
brellaed and cloaked. The tears of the gods were still un- 
quenched ; I had sought my friend in vain, and though I 
anticipated passing the evening at the Pavilion Theatre, 
erected at the extremity of the lung pier extending far out 
in the Channel, I returned to the hotel, through the balmy 
air and the clinging torrents. 
10 



110 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

A thorough English dinner and the drenching over, both 
ample and satisfactory, I ensconced myself before the 
genial sea-coal fire in the cosy sitting-rooln of the silent 
English hotel — always silent as cloisters even if filled with 
company- — to enjoy my companion, — a book — for a couple 
of hours, before retiiing to rest under the same roof that 
had sheltered the Empress Eugenie, when she came to 
meet her son, the young Prince Imperial, after her escai)e 
from the palace of the Tuileries. in this flight she was 
aided by our fellow-countiyman, Dr. Thomas Evans, pro- 
prietor of the AmHvicaii Begisle?-. And then I slei)t to the 
chant of the waves, while visions danced through my head 
of ltlood\^ fi'a3's, led by Harold the Saxon on one side and 
the Norman William upon the other; of vast fleets of men 
of w^ar moored close by; of Matilda the industrious wife 
of the Conqueror, and her maids of honor engaged in sew- 
ing si)hinxes, and birds, and dogs, and horses, — oh, such 
horses! — and trees, and ships, and men upon that great big 
sampler — the Pictorial History of the Invasion — that she 
presented to the Bishop of Bayeux. 

Next morning was dreary and damp, as I made a tour of 
the shops — numerous, beautiful, and complete — and the 
ascent of the rearward hills to obtain a view of the beach 
thronged bj^ the rude fisheimen in fantastic dress, some in 
their boats, and others upon laud mending their nets for 
future use; the broad marine parade stretching far away 
along the coast ; the town immediately beneath me snug- 
gling close to the rocks for protection ; healthy villages 
crowning lofty summits, and the ghastly desolation of the 
dismantled castle upon a seemingly perilous cliff. i\s I 
retraced my zigzag steps, 1 descried new comforts and 
luxuries concealed in cosy recesses Back again we went 
through Wellington Square to our hotel, a clean edifice of 
stone, where our carriage waited to couvcn' us to St. Leon- 
_ards-on-Sea, the '" West End'' of Hastings. Our ride was 
along the sea, then by the side of the lion sea, quiet and 
calm — but evidently as powerful as the other forces of 
nature. A continuous fagade of white stone houses extends 
from the East Cliffs to Bopeep ; in the bow windows were 
rather good-looking, clumsy women gazing out upon the 
world of 'waters. But there were no blue skies nor pure 
waves of air; no pleasure barges, nor eipiestrian parties; 
no stream of fashion's votaries pouring through the streets, 
and no promeuaders lounging in the arcades, for the over- 
charged emotions of the gods were still uncontrollable 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. Ill 

On we rode past solid, strong structures, until we reached 
St. Leonard's. What a lovely town ! with noble and en- 
during homes, fine shops, the same features of atmosphere, 
architecture, luxurious private residences, and none of the 
horrors of a London winter, as the historical Hastings. 
Here I observed the same large feet of the ladies, awkward 
carriage, indifference to dress, and utter lack of taste. 

There is no more interesting, beautiful, romantic, and 
historical spot in England than Sussex County or its shires. 
Everywhere are found relics, eloquent of Roman origin and 
occupation; legends of the Norman Conquest; ancient 
estates and titled castles. 

These two seaside towns, Hastings and St. Leonards-on- 
Sea, even seen through a vail of gloom, more completely 
fill my ideal than any similar resorts we have in America. 
Of course I had sketched my picture of Atlantic City, 
Cape May, Long Branch, Spring Lake and many others 
before visiting them; and upon personal acquaintance I 
found I had been feeding upon delusion. I had thought to 
enjoy the seashore, tiie hotels should be placed directly on 
the sands, facing main ward, where the roll of the "deep 
and dark-blue ocean " should be ever dashing against our 
windows, instead of standing in a paved street half a mile, 
and frequently a greater distance from the waters. Another 
feature that always disappointed me at home was the ab- 
sence of rocks, and every topographical accessory that 
makes up a beautiful landscape, or rather, marine scene. 
Here I had it all! 

Every 3^ear greater numbers of our people are copying 
the foreign custom of wintering by the sea, and the fact of 
the beneficial effect of the soft and salubrious salt air upon 
those suffering from pulmonar}' complaiiits must strengthen 
this fashion. As for me, I should never wish to escape the 
glory, the fervent clearness, and nipping air of an Ameri- 
can winter. 

One fact deserves to be studied by the people of Long 
Branch, Cape May, Atlantic City, Seagirt, and other 
Atlantic sea-settlements; that from the closing of the 
summer season to its reopening, they have many long spells 
of delightfully soft and salubrious weather, and that they 
ought to profit by the experiences of Hastings. 



112 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER :XXIV. 

" Deep in the wave is a coral grove, 
Where the purple mullet and gold fish rove ; 
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue 
That never are wet with falling dew, 
But in bright and changeful beauty shine 
Far down in the green and glassy brine. 

The floor is of sand like the mountain -drift, 
And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow ; 

From coral rocks the sea-plants lift 
Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow ; 
The water is calm and still below, 

For the winds and waves are absent there, 
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow 

In the motionless fields of upper air." 

James Gates Percival. 

London, April, 1878. 

The Crystal Palace! the beautiful glass temple, witii its 
girders of iron, crowning fair Sydenham Hill, eight miles 
lVt)m London, is a store-house of every department of an- 
cient and modern art and science. Its English and Italian 
gardens, foreign mediaeval architectural courts, and histori- 
cal portrait gallery, are lessons for meditation, and form an 
unrivalled preparatory school to a Continental tour. Yet 
its industrial department was in a state of dishabille when 
I saw it, a,nd many of its sections were dingy and tawdry. 
But English w^ealth, ever ai)parent, is in nothing so strik- 
ing as in tlie copies of expensive and unobtainable originals 
in this same Crystal Palace: copies of statuary, paintings, 
plate, armor, castles, tombs, shrines, jewels, ceramics, an- 
tiques, and all the spoils of the ages, which are invaluable 
as so many reflections of the reality. So opulent, indeed, 
is England, with London as its treasure-house, reinforced 
by English pride (for they are as fond of their country as 
a woman of Iier diamonds), that though the great Palace 
has not proved a financial success, the^' will not allow it to 
fail. Very beautiful and ample are the attractions of this' 
permanent exhibition; but I am still blase^ by dint of the 
splendors of our Centennial. And so in place of rhapso- 
dizing over all that is spread before me at this banquet of 
pleasure and knowledge, I orally compare and contrast,, 
and my verdict is always: Young America has excelled his 
parent! 

I lingered long in the Pompeian Court, a cop}^ like that 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 113 

to be presented by Mr. Jolin Welsh, our good minister in 
London, to our Fairmonnt Park, endeavoring to glean 
some ideas of the exhumed city, where Deo volente 1 shall 
pass sf)me future days studying the chapters written by 
ancient art and time. The decorations of the musical court 
are appropriate and novel; sacred music is typified by 
David, ""the sweet singer of Israel," and Miriam; also pas- 
toral and martial melody by Pan. These are upon the 
exterior, while the interior is still more beautiful and im- 
posing. Extending quite along the four sides of the court 
are arched recesses — depositories for the instruments. 
Over each of these presides the bust of a famous composer. 
Tiie panels and columns are adorned with playing boys, 
musical instruments, pipes, and shells entwined with fitting 
foliage en bas reliefs and vis-avis upon the sides are St. 
Cecilia an<l the muse Erato en alto-relievo. 

But to the Marine Aquarium! Ho.e I passed my time, 
for here 1 found a conge^iial amusement in the study of 
natural science. Of all the 'ologies, this one through all 
its departments and epochs, from the genus homo to the 
lowest grade of animal life, the poriphora or por3' class, as 
sponges, has ever been my pet since my salad days, when 
J received from the sanctified hand of Archbishop Wood, 
under the convent roof of the Academy of Notre Dame, 
the prize for zoology. But some years have elapsed, and 
having had no subsequent experience with great aquaria, I 
enjoyed the novel feast with fresh delight. Long did I watch 
the habits, and study the history of the curious species of 
the first-class (fish) of animals. Here were the brilliantly 
and beautifully colored Wrasse that abound on the coast 
of Norwa}', and though manj"^ writers versed in fish lore 
tell us that as we ascend into northern seas we find the 
scales of the water-living tribe losing all the radiant hue 
l^eculiar to the tropics, and invariably dull and leaden in 
color, we here have a strong contradictory proof of the text 
in this exquisite animal; the male is as beautiful as a rain- 
bow, having ultranuirine-blue and greenish-bronze stripes 
upon the body, while the head is adorned with the most 
vivid blue and yellow ; the female is not nearly so handsome, 
though flashin^ly attractive. The Lamprey, with which 
the reservoirs of Diomed were well stocked, — the fish upon 
which tiie first-century Syl)arites supped, — were adhering 
to the rocks and glass of the tanks with their ugly disk- 
shaped mouths. One of the Sole family was floundering 
about with the outlines of tlie human face and features 



114 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

plainly defined npon the obverse. I saw the Stickleback 
weaving its nest of weeds, which it sewed together with 
threads exuded from its body, in the same manner as the 
filaments that tlie spider uses in tiie construction of his web. 
Of course the animals peculiar to Britisii waters were here 
in great affluence, the White-bait, Whiting, Smelts, Gray 
Mullet, etc ; and I watched them eating, sleeping, resting, 
burrowing, and house-building. 

It wns the first fair demonstration I had of zoophytes or 
the animal flowers. Their form is that of a beautiful flower 
and generally of a i)ale })ink or yellow flesh-color, their 
nianifold tentacles bearing a strong resemblance to human 
flesh. Like the Scriptural Peter, I was not content with 
tl>e GUI dire of their animated existence, and determined 
upon having an exhibition of animal life from these white- 
blooded cieatuies. 1 saw they had motion, and poweis of 
expansion, but these faculties would be common if they 
possessed only the vegetable nature. 1 had not long to 
wait, for soon the keeper came with feed; it wms with few 
exceptions raw flesh; their absorption of organic matter 
was a conclusive })roof of their animalism. This class of 
creation, more familiar as sea-anemones, are radiate ani- 
mals, and breathe from the surface of their bodies. They 
are sensitive to touch, although no nerves have been de- 
tected ; but they must exist in some species, as they are 
capable of being rendered insensible hy an opiate. I no- 
ticed they were all voracious, though they presented a 
well-fed and healthy appearance, their comi)lexions rosy, 
and their limbs full; but their tentacles are ever spread in 
"full blast," to sweep whatever may approach them into 
the cavities of their stomachs. To secure living prey they 
eject poisonous darts. Their dinner was conveyed to them 
from the top of the tank by means of a curved tongs. Each 
one was fed singly, and as the tongs holding the feed was 
lowered within level of their reach, all the neighl)ors of the 
one who was to receive the prize extended their mouths 
until you could look into the very pit of their b(Klies, and 
then contracted with despair and disappointment. Like 
all eager feeders their powers of locomotion are limited. 
The most active and energetic have never been known to 
accomplish more than six inches of travel in twenty-four 
hours, and the most slothful scarcely move their position 
in a life-time. If the aquaria are healthy they often exist 
forty-five years and even longer periods, giving birth to 
thousands of young, and evincing no signs of approaching 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 115 

age, a proof of their flevotion to the command, "bring 
forth and raulliply." Those that have a taste for travel 
and no desire to tax tlieir own energies, liave the human in- 
stinct of attaching themselves to the back or flank of a 
more ambitions creature, the crustacean. The crab, lobster, 
or pi'awn, often becomes so burdened by its parasitic 
friends, that it abandons its shell in sheer desperation and 
seeks another home, while another species so resignedly 
yields all authority to the s^'cophant, that when it changes 
its habitation it conveys its vital incumbrance hither. The 
great lesson taught in this volume is the human povver of 
understanding between these lowest organized creatures. 
There are many beautiful legends of the zoophytes in c(;n- 
nection with ancient warriors whose powers and customs 
faithfully resembled them. 

Full of this interesting study it occurred to me that I 
migiit complete it by an examination into the enormous 
l)layhouse and museum, " The Aquarium," a few steps from 
the Westminster Palace Hotel; so pa^-ing our shilling we 
sauntered into this other variegated world, and it only re- 
quired a few minutes to realize that the title of the great 
exhibition was in one sense a misnomer. At first intended 
to be a grand depository of all the ocean tribes, it has rap- 
idly' become a receptacle of the works of the human tribes, 
a sort of caravansera, or olla pocbHda^ or general rendezoous^ 
not only of fish, and fowl, and birds, and beasts, and 
flowers, and minerals, but of all the species of the [)aragon 
of animals. In one end Uncle Tom's Cabin played to 
thousands daily by colored Americans, men, women, and 
children; in another Chinese acrobats, Asiatic jugglers, 
Swiss musicians, Turkish doctors, the American circus, 
operatic matinees, wrestlers, dancers, telephone experiments, 
learned pigs, educated fleas, and finally a wonderCul mind- 
reader, " Little Louie," a girl about ten, trained to a light- 
ning perception, by means of intuitive psychology, and 
like all those oce-ult practices, quite beyond explanation. 
Fancy this child standing at her father's side, eyes ban- 
daged, and answering quickly to every question he puts to 
her, as he passes from her to a considerable distance among 
the audience, and liolds in his hand the special object he 
receives or takes from a spectator; it may be a watch, or a 
. coin, or a book, or a manuscript, or an inscribed ring, or 
the tiniest article or animal, while rapid as thought she 
characterizes the article, its size, its color, and what is most 
astonishing, the date, the name of owner, and inscription. 



116 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Having failed to discover at)}' curious inhabitants of the 
great deep, I was sufliciently successful in searching for 
blrango material among my own fellow-crealures. 



LETTER XXV. 

"Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out: 
The several chairs of order look you scour 
With juice of balm, and every precious tlower : 
Eacli t'iiir instahneut, coat, and several crest. 
With loyal blazon, ever more be blest 1 
And nightly, meadow-tairies, look, you sing, 
Like to the Garter s compass, in a ring." 

Mekky Wives of Windsor. 

London, April, 1878. 

Saturday was a bright, balmy, British day. The whole 
town was in a tumult; the two rival colleges, Oxford and 
Cambridge, were to row against each other on the Thames, 
and myriads came to see, but we were royally inclined, and 
the train that carried us to Windsor, stopped at every little 
roadside station only to be laden by hundreds of country 
la<ls and lasses bound for the river race. Before we reached 
our destination the radiance of the morning had turned to 
rain, and so we saw Windsor Palace, one of the eight his- 
torical homes of the Queen, through a vail of gloom. Our 
route to Windsor lay through the enchanting valley of the 
Thames, bordered by the opulent estates of the wealth^' 
nobles. As we moved onward the scene was so fertile, 
finished, and clean, so like a regal beauty waiting for the 
robes of spring, that the wonder grew, where the multi- 
tudinous poor were hived. Being in Windsor tovvn, what 
first impressed me was the Merry Wives, or maidens, that 
thronged tlie little winding stri els. Within the castle court, 
to ride through the d<niltle row of elms, "the long walk," 
from the York and Lancaster Towers lo Snow Hill, where 
George III is enthroned in all his brazen splendor, was my 
first step; and 1 think the most delightful part of my visit 
to the palace-home was passed under the shadow of the 
mighty trees that shelter the avenue which all the inonarchs 
of Kn<rland have trodden. Three continuous miles of such 
fresh, formal foliage was a banquet for a botanist. To give 
the history of Windsor would be to relate the history of 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 117 

the kings and courts of England ; altlioiigh William the Con- 
queror is said to have had a residence here, the architecture 
of the most ancient towers is not earlier than the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuiies; but so much of the original edi- 
fice has undergone alteration, and so much has been added 
to it, that the authors of its first towers are almost as fabu- 
lous as Noah's Ark. The castle as we now see it, is with 
Vf-r}^ few exceptions the creation of Sir Jeffrey W3^atville, 
in the reign of George lY, against the tyranny of whose 
father our ancestors warred and won. Never had I so 
esteemed American liberty until I came here to learn the 
pomp and wretchedness, the glory and gloom, the con- 
tumacy and despotism of the dead monarch, though as I 
looke(i at the portrait of George III, all my resentment 
melted into admiration and pride for the artist, Benjamin 
West, a member of the Royal Academy, and an American. 
And as 1 gazed 1 recollected with still greater exultation 
the loj^alty of the republican painter in the darkest hours 
of our contest, even while he was surrounded by royalty. 
One day when Benjnmin West was engaged on the King's 
portrait, the castle was in a tempest of hilarity at the news 
of a victory over the transatlantic rebels. The King ap- 
pealed to him to learn the cause of his silence, adding, 
''Why do 3^ou not join in our rejoicing?" To which Mr. 
West mnde the read}^ and haughty reply, " I cannot feel 
pleasure in hearing of misfortunes to those among whom I 
was born and })assed my early days." Even the arrogant 
monarcii was moved by the pathetic and noble retort, and 
replied, *' Right, right, West! Good sentiment, and 1 honor 
you for it." 

In those days, the sovereigns made their London homes 
in the quaint old jail-like castle of St. James, at the foot of 
the Park, the meadows that Henry VI 11 had converted 
into a pleasaunce. Tliis dingy brick structure, originally 
a ho pital for leprous women, is really the only edifice of 
the kind in all the capital that contains. saZc»??« suflSciently 
spacious for royal levees, but George IV pined for a more 
sumptuous residence, and therefore transferred the court 
to Buckingham Palace, at the western end of St. James's 
Paik and immediately opposite Green Park. 

The Queen had gone to Osborn Castle, in the land of 
cakes, so the whole of this grand collection of the centuries 
was open to our inspection, except the private apartments, 
and after paying due respect to the mausoleum of the 
Prince Consort, the Virginia water, which is famous and 



118 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

artificial, and the ruins which did not awaken in my bosom 
any emotion of reverence, for they are also fictitious — they 
are said to have been brought hither from Tripoli, and their 
entire history is veiled in obscurity tliat is impenetrable — 
we passed to the royal stables, of endless chariots, phae- 
tons, wagons, and barouches, most of them gifts from for- 
eign powers, a mass of splen(^or that remains unused at 
least six months in the year. Her Majesty has her stables 
in London, Osborn, and Balmoral amply stocked, and 
though she is constantly peregrinating, the domestic ap- 
pointments of the palaces are stationary. Of the horses 
retained for the pleasure of royalty eighty-five are at 
Windsor, sixt3'^-five at Osborn, and eight^^ in London, to 
say nothing of the Government equipages. 

The terraces and gardens, fountains and parterres, the 
Vand3'ck room, the Zuccarelli room, the Sir Thomas Law- 
rence or Waterloo Chamber, I must slight for the Round 
Tower, the most antique of the massive battlements over 
which the royal standard floats when the Queen is at 
Windsor. Mounting two bundled and seventy steps, we 
finally reached the acropolis, from which our brusque and 
ruddy soldier-guide pointed out the luxurious regions 
round about, including the territor}'^ of twelve opulent 
English counties, transcendently fascinating, though seen 
through a shroud of vapor; alternating with spires, domes, 
rivei', forest, road, rail, ships on water, and steam trains 
on land, all bound up in history, poetr^', and romance. It 
was like a dream of enchantment. Then this bovine son 
of Mars asked me if I knew what river lay so tranquil and 
tawny below us and was lost amidst the hills and dales. 
When I answered, "Certainly ; the Thames," he took up 
the refrain, saying, "Yes, the Thames; the greatest river 
in the world. You have no such stream in your vast 
stretch of country. True, your Mississippi is larger, but 
1 tell you this is the greatest of all rivers;" and with these 
words he clapped his mouth together as if he had delivered 
his ultima um. I confess I was amazed at the abrupt 
assertion, and could no more summon tiie moral courage 
to reply, than to a young mother, when she announced 
that the shapeless mass of rose-colored flesh in the cradle 
— which more intimately resembled a zoophyte than any 
animated object I ever saw — was the most beautiful and 
wonderful of all heaven-born creatures. Such is the love 
and pride of Fatherland that the Britons have bequeathed 
to their ofl'spring. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 119 

To our right was Henry the Eitrhth's Gateway, the 
trysting-place of the polygamous monarch and the young 
and attractive Anne Boleyn. It was here that he came 
to meet her when he l)estowed the title of marchioness 
only as an avant courier of the jewelled diadem tiiat 
awaited her. 

Slightly to the left, oh the opposite side of the Thames, 
Eton College and Park, presenting a very different aspect 
from the one that met my eye a couple of weeks ago, when 
I rowed up the river Now the hall was closed and the 
greensward deserted; the students had gone home for the 
Easter holidays. 

To our rear lay Frogmore, the home of the Duchess of 
Kent, now the residence of her grandchildren, the Prince 
and Princess Chi'istian of Schleswig-Holstein. 

Below is the Home Park, where once stood Heme's 
oak, immortalized by the poet in the Merry Wives of 
Windsor. The spot is marked by a sapling of the same 
famil>'. 

Away off is the green meadow of Runnymede, separated 
from Charter Island ^)nly b}' a narrow estuary of the 
Thames, as calm and sleep}'^ in the misty noontide, as if it 
had not witnessed the wrested signati^re of King John to 
the great charter of the insurgent nobles and clergy for 
the rights and liberties of the people in the tliirteenth cen- 
tury. With the aid of a lorgnette 1 plainly saw the Stoke 
Poges churchyard, where Thomas Gray wrote his famous 
Elegy^ and close to the Round Tower where I stood, is 
the castle curfew that "tolls the knell of parting day." In 
this same belfry the butcher, Mark Fylton, was confined 
and eventually hanged, for breathing scathing rebukes upon 
the King's incontinent and untimely love for the fair daugh- 
ter of Sir Thomas Boleyn. 

Descending the tower with a view by the way of the 
Queen's dining saloon, where she entertained our solaier 
President and his spouse less than a year ago, and where 
she welcomes the royalty of other lands, we next included 
what many regard as the most interesting ))art of this 
venerable fortress, palace, and historic treasure-house, St. 
George's Chapel. Smaller than the several cathedrals I 
had seen, yet wonderfully oppressive and impressive by 
its chill}'^ silence and the suspended banners of the knights 
and kings. It was interesting because here the mother 
and grandmother. Empress and Queen, worships in public 
whenev'er she occupies her castle on the Thames. Here 



120 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

many of tlie great ones were mated and mourned. Here 
famous Cliurch of England preachers have preached; here 
all the illustrious men of the realm, courtiers and cabinet 
ministers, soldiers and statesmen, have worshipped during 
their prolonged visits on state occasions. Here the Prince 
of Wales was married to Alexandra, and here the superb 
voice of Jenny Lind poured her mellow melody through 
these lofty groined arches, and chanted in her unequalled 
tones the sacred henison com[K>sed by the Prince-consort, 
Albert, for his eldest son and heir. 



LET ITER XX Y I. 

"Thence with Creed to hire a coach to carry ns to Hide Parke 
to-da}', there being a general muster of the King's Guards, horse and 
foot ; but they demand so high, that T, spying Mr. Cutler, the mer- 
chant, did take notice of him, and he going into his coach, telling 
me that he was going to the muster, I asked and went along wiih 
him ; where a goodlj sight to see so many fine horses and officers, 
King, Duke, and others, come by a-horsel)ack, and the two Queenes 
in tiie Queene-Mother's coach."— Pepys' Diaky, July 4, 1663. 

London, April, 1878. 

Of the lungs of the great metropolis, none is more vital 
than Hyde Park, the aristocratic resort of the " West End ;" 
bordeied b}'^ the luxurious homes of Grosvernor Square, 
environed by royalty, traversed by foot and carriage-roads 
crossing at all angles, irrigated by the Serpentine, en- 
riched and enlivened by the exclusively equestrian inclos- 
ure, Rotten Row — this ineleofant title of the most famous 
bridle-path in the world is really a corruption of route du 
roi — it is at once the haunt of the gay voluptuary, the 
fashionable inconnu^ the wealthy parvenu^ and tiie cen- 
turied iioblenne. And as I turned from the long line of 
regal equipages, glistening under the oblique rays of tiie 
sinking sun as they wound around Ladies' Mile following 
the northern bank of the Seipentine, with footmen and 
outriders in lapis-lazuli liveries, gold lace, powdered peri- 
wigs, and silken hose, and a burden of portly dowagers 
in garish dress — turned to the horsewomen with their 
iockey grooms in buckskin or corduroy, following at a 
respectful distance, passing under the solid symnictiy of 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 121 

the marble arch, past the colossal bronze of the Welling- 
ton Monument, crossing the pillars of tlie stone bridge 
that gives access to Kensington Gardens — within the 
shadow of whose mighty trees. Her Gracious Majesty first 
saw the light of day — and saw away off the memorial 
glories of the Albert Cenotaph — the British troops review- 
ing upon the level sward, to the shrill music of the ear- 
l)iercing fife — it all seemed a pageant of the feudal ages. 
The beautiful Serpentine is an artificial stream fed by the 
Chelsea water-works, where the lovers of skating and 
sliding revel in the winter with as much delight as the 
aquatic zealots in the heated season. 

Not so celebrated and universally favored, but larger 
and equally attractive, is Regent's Park, which was a 
regal home and gardens in the sixteenth century. It 
})assed into the possession of private individuals subse- 
quent to the annihilation of the Protectorate when the 
House of Stuart was restored; but recurred to the Crown 
upon the accession of the Hanoverians, and was converted 
into a i)ublic recreation ground by the Prince Regent, 
who afterwards became George IV. It is situated close to 
the northern limits of the dingy metropolis, between Mary- 
le-bone and Hampstead roads, while Albany and Clarence 
streets, and Park Road, are upon its immediate confines. 
Scattered through the park are exquisite private villas 
closed in by massive strong hedges; majestic terraces of 
mansions form an outer boundary. A diversity of rural 
scenery, hill, dale, lake, delightful retreats, and sequestered 
promenades under leafy canopies by quiet nooks and 
dream}?^ avenues, challenge the admiration of the lover of 
nature. The astrologist ma}'- read the language of tlie 
planets written upon the azure dome from Bishop's Obser- 
vatory ; the botanist reap a harvest of erudition in the 
costly hot-beds; the ornithologist gratify his soaring am- 
bitions in the aviaries and branches of the ti-ees; an(i 
the mammalogist or herpetologist indulge his propensities 
among the mammalia and reptiles in the dens and pad- 
docks of the Zoological Garden at the northeastern ex- 
tremitj^ of the Park. Hyde is the resort of the sybarite, 
Regent's the retreat of the student. 

Of all the pleasure grounds of London, St. James can 
boast of the historic and romantic leo-ends of love, intric^ue, 
and dark strategy; perhaps because it was the palace paik, 
and so close to the chambers of political and social royal 
transactions. The second Charles greatly beautified it, I 
11 



122 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

presume in honor of his fair captor, Nell Gwynn. It was 
here tiiat the king and she who liad been born in squalid 
poverty, and whose transition through the several roles of 
orange-giii, coneert-saloon danseuse, fantastical or jocular 
actress, until she reached the apex of the social column, 
bided tryst. Varied, potent, and si)arkling were the ac- 
com|)lishments of j^retty Nelly. The spot seems dedicated 
to and hallowed by the sovereign lover's example ; and is 
slill a rei)d«^zvous of successive Romeos and Juliets, He- 
loises and Abelards, Jessicas and Lorenzos. 

Since welcome spring's advent a booth has been con- 
structed iri the park where fresh milk and cream is the 
specialt3\ To prove the purity of this article, the kine are 
stationed by; this is for the nourishment of the myriads 
of poor children sporting upon the sward. If the prices 
equal those i paid several months ago while patronizing 
that exceedinor moral beverage, the indigent and ill-starred 
youths of Britain do not indulge in frequent libations. 
Under the peristole of old St. James' Palace patrol the 
guards, with little to heed except the royal mews of the 
Queen. The Park is at once bond and barrier between the 
castle and Marlborough House, the city residence of the 
Prince of Wales. Numerous as are the legends of the 
Park, they are exceeded by those of the Palace. George 
IV was born here, but high revel has not been held in these 
spacious chambers since the da3's of his father, though 
many still speak of our ambassador being sent to the Court 
of St. James. Foreign ministers are now accredited to a 
countrj^ not a court, to a people not a potentate. 

Love intrigues, i)olitical plots, traffic in honor, barter of 
human souls, sad leave-takings, deaths, births, and the 
amalgamation of infants, have left their dark imprint upon 
the old castle walls, but there is no more amusing chapter 
in its histoiy than that devoted to the presentation of Mr. 
anci ]^rs. John Adams, our first envoy after the peace with 
England, to the Court of George III and his plain and un- 
assuming queen. On both occasions of Mr. Adams's first 
meeting with the king and queen he was armed with a 
length}" and preconceived address, for which the royal 
couple weie unprepared. The king readily collected his 
scatteretl senses and made rather an able reply, but his 
equally eloquent burst of oratory to Queen Charlotte quite 
overpowered the little woman, — for though a queen, still 
only a woman, and not nearly so finished in manners, nor 
possessing the ajjlomb of the republican ambassador's wife 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 123 

— and her only answer to his loft}^ rhetorical explosion 
was, "I thank yon, sir, for your civilities to me and my 
family, and am glad to see you in this country-;" then the 
queen relapsed into a friendly conversation witli tlie 
American official, in which all the royal family could take 
part. When Mrs. Adams and her daughter attended their 
first "drawing-room," at St. James' Palace, slie was quite 
as nonplussed by the initial address of the king as his 
roj'al consort had been some time previous hy the exalted 
speech of Mr. Adams. "Have 3^ou taken a walk this 
morning?" he said. Now the entire forenoon had been 
occupied in donning the court costumes, upon the con- 
struction of which so man}'^ days had been spent, and the 
lady was inclined to tell the truth, but upon reflection 
merely answered in the negative; upon this, the obtuse 
sovereign drove her to the wall by asking if she " did not 
enjo}^ walking?" and now the poor, persecuted female was 
obliged to offer the base fabrication " that she was rather 
indolent in that respect." The queen was always embar- 
rassed in the presence of Mrs. Adams, while the latter re- 
mained perfectly undazzled by the foreign court. She was 
a plain-spoken, democratic American, with considerable 
cultivation and uncommon good sense, and therefore never 
a favorite at the shrine of arrogant, pedantic, vulgar title- 
worship. 

The prevailing stjde of city architecture in Great Britain, 
though stately and imposing, is oppressive. All the famous 
churches, halls, castles, banks, theatres, and public edifices 
are either the original plans of Sir Christopher Wren and 
Inigo Jones, or have been remodelled from their draughts. 

The idea of dividing the metropolis into sections, or 
squares, or places, or parks, or parishes, is a pretty one, 
and a necessity in a city where there are almost two hun- 
dred St. John streets. How should one ever find his des- 
tination if the affixes, Bei-keley Square, Finsbury Park, 
Portman Square, Bloomsbury Square, etc., were banished 
from the directory ? 

The veritable English hot cross-buns, of which we read 
so much in our infantile rhymes, are always eaten here on 
Good Friday morning, so yesterday at breakfast we were 
regaled by the annual supply. 

Among the bigoted millions these cakes are retained 
from one Easter jubilee to another to prevent whooping- 
cough in the family. 

Indeed, many of the customs that we think American 



124 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

are borrowed from England, and T am daily surprised at 
strange practices that need an explanation to make intelli- 
gible. The shop wii)dows are filled vvith Easter eggs, just 
as the churches were arranged for Good Friday, and Lent 
was an interval of abstinence, and palms were worn bv 
Catholic and Protestant on Palm Sunday. The British 
have a. thousand inherited follies, which tliey continue to 
honor only because they are old. These odd and childish 
customs are not confined to the common people, but are 
cherished by the nobility and the throne. 



LETTER XXVII. 

" These bookmen, what a busy race ! 

How liappy in themselves and others ! 
They glorify all time and place, 
And make us human beings brothers. 

*' What rapture to themselves they give ! 
What joy to millions yet unborn ! 
Thus in their wondrous works they live, 
And turn the night of dulness into morn/' 

Anonymous. 

London, April, 1878. 

Among the wonders of London the British Museum is 
the first. To recount the attractions it offers and the les- 
sons it teaches would require transcendent genius. It is 
so all-absorbing, and there is so much of it, tliat it over- 
wiielmed me. Far different the feeling it excited from that 
inspired by the Tower, Westminster Abbey, the Parliament 
Palaces, the Docks, and the Thames. The British Museum 
is a collection of human progress, a wedding between the 
past and present; the great threshold upon which to an- 
ticipate and look into the future. It is of imposing pres- 
ence, and under the sunless skies and humid atmosphere 
of London, apparently venerable. Yet the massive group 
that bears its name, though projected at the close of the 
last cenlur3'^, was only commenced in 1823 and completed 
twenty-seven 3'ears afterward. 

The approach to this mighty structure is through a spa- 
cious court-yard, and under the portals of the Doric en- 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 125 

trance liall, thirt3^ feet high; but this altitude is dwarfed 
by its breadth and depth. At the western extremity is the 
grand staircase, itself a work of great magnificence, with 
its walls and gigantic figures; and it was only when I 
reached the top that I gleaned some idea of the immense 
temple itself. Through five stupendous galleries of this 
section I lingered, sTnd endeavored to store awjjy a part of 
what was spread about me of botany, zoology, mammalogy, 
mineralogy, to say nothing of the seven galleries devoted 
to sculpture, and the five to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman 
antiquities. In this department many of the relics and in- 
ventions seem odd and inipractical, others warlike, and 
others serviceable and suggestive. 

The English are famous for bequests, and if I could 
determine the millions bestowed upon this institution l)y 
private individuals as well as the Government, my story of 
the museum would be better understood. Founded by the 
Sir Hans Sloane collection in 1T83, and holding in its halls 
the most varied subsequent gifts and purchases of invalu- 
able antiquities, the British Museum is not I'eally older than 
the date of the finish of its chief structures thirty ^^ears ago. 
George IV presented his father's valual)le lil>rai-y of 70,000 
volumes; then came the Harleian MSS ; the Cottonian 
Library, and priceless objects purchased by the authorities, 
makintr one ":io;antic storehouse ot learnino". What adds 
to the interest is the steady incessant contril)utions of the 
rich and titled who die without heirs, and have under their 
own roofs vast deposits of curiosities, collected by them- 
selves or their ancestors, which they do not care to will 
and fear to scatter, even amongst their distant kindred. 
To such people the British Museum is a blessing, and by 
them, not only the institution, but all the striving, studious 
millions, in the future, are reciprocall}^ blessed. So here 
they leave their precious gatherings safely, feeling that 
their names will live forever in a blazonry of fame as well 
for the motive itself as for the intrinsic merit of their gifts. 
As we advance in years in America, by a natural sequence, 
the same practice will enrich our colleges, libraries, schools, 
and benevolent foundations Here in this comprehensive 
microcosm my reflections were not only of the authors and 
donors, but of the millions that have poured through the 
corridors, and of the great men and women who have come 
here to gather food for their literary labors. Admission 
is free to all three days in every week, from 10 a.m. till 
dusk, and on Saturday from 12 m. until dusk. A museum 

11* 



126 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

upon which countless sums have heen expended, that has 
been the object of the generosity of princes and magnates, 
and the living care of Parliament, is thus thrown open to 
the poorest and the richest. 

I lingered b}' the desks where Thackeray, Dickens, and 
their associates, read and wrote ; and where Macaula^^ as 
trustee and student, sat while he gave shape and file to the 
material he had collected for his marvellous history. In 
the King's Library he took his notes, and referred con- 
stantly to the shoal of [)amphlets preserved by the third 
George, and given to the public by his son. Across this 
threshold have passed far greater monarchs than common 
kings and queens. You are sure to meet tiie contemporary 
celebrities at their desks if you come frequently; and if 
you yourself be an habitue, at regular intervals you 
will see such characters as Tennyson, Tyndall, Charles 
Read, George Eliot, the Baroness Burdette-Coutts, John 
Bright, Beaconsfield, Kosetti, Swinburne, Edmund Yates, 
Dean Stanley, Cardinal Manning, Archbishop Tate, Mon- 
signore Capel, Canon Farrar, John Walker, of the Times^ 
Levy, of the Telegraphy Sir Charles Dilke, Henr^^ Byron, 
Halliwell Phillips, Gilbert, Sullivan, and all the great and 
even lesser minds of the bench, the bar, the pulpit. Parlia- 
ment, and the academy; a host of willing slaves of the pen, 
citizens of the Republic of Bohemia. To linger and ponder 
in this magazine of the dead ages, this sagacious piepara- 
tion for the inspired thoughts of unborn generations, took 
much of my time, so I went home, returning another day 
to essay the autographs, letters, manuscripts, ro^al, baro- 
nial and ecclesiastical seals, a wonderful collection. The 
letters of the dead are ever sadly interesting. They out- 
live the body, and are the nearest of man's living works. 
They endure be3'ond his posterity, and are more precious 
than i)rint or photograph. Leaving the Greville Library, 
1 mused ui)on the autograph manuscripts of Martin Luther, 
the great theological reformer of the tifteenUi and sixteenth 
centuries (in this letter he asserts that disbelief in purga- 
tory is not heresy) ; of Philip Melancthon (born 1497, died 
1560, acknowledging a present of venison); Cardinal Wol- 
sey, ""^ who once trod the ways of glory," to his young friend 
and aid, Thomas Cromwell (subsequently Earl of Kssex), 
informing him that Richmond Lodge was not yet read}' for 
his reception; Sir Walter Raleigh, directing that bread 
furnished for voyaging adventures should be i)repared, his 
letter is dated from the court; Sir Philip Sidnej'', writte^i 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 127 

in French from the coiii-t, assui'ing M. Jenn Hotnan of his 
friendship; Sir Franc-is Bacon, Attorney General to James 
I, on argnments in the Star Cliamher; and one from our 
old friend, William Penn, regretting- his inability to do 
a service for a friend; the letters Irom Ariosto, Michael 
Angelo, Albert Diirer, Fanl Rnbens, Van Dj^ck, Rem- 
brandt, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Vollaire, Prior, Swift, 
Addison, Dryden, Hogarth, Pitt, Burke, Fox, Washington, 
Franklin. Byron, Wellington, and the Admiral Xelson to 
his fair friend Lady Hamilton, on the eve of the battle of 
Trafalgar, communicating that tiie enemy's combined fleets 
were coming out of the port, and that he hoped to finish 
his letter, dated on Board the Victor^', October 19th, 1805. 
He continued it next day, but it was left unfinished, and a 
few lines in the hand of Lad}' Hamilton state that it was 
found in Lord Nelson's desk, after this action of October 
21st, in which he lost his life. There are autographs of 
numerous E n owlish and foreion sovereigns; a signature of 
Shakespeare, and manuscripts of Pojje, Burns, Walter 
Scott, Dr. Johnson, Ben. Jonson, Macaulay, Queen Eliza- 
beth, Mary, Queen of Scots; many cases of original char- 
ters, missals, Hindoo miniatures, Buddhist books, hymns 
in Ethiopic language, the Gospels on cotton paper in Ar- 
menian language, the Koran in minute Arabic characters, 
poems and albums in Arabic and Persian, seals of the sove- 
reions of Eno;land from Edward the Confessor to her reio-n- 
ing Majesty; seals of bishops and archbishoi)s, of abbots 
and abbeys, and sevent3'-tive baronial seals of ladies of rank. 
Such are the jewels found in this gigantic shell — ^jewels and 
rarities that come from the ages. Lord Macaulay justly 
said, "It was one of the glories of his country." 

The collection of Henry Weeks, professor of sculpture, 
on Tichborne Street, is one of the countless instances of 
scientific philanthropy. It consists chiefl}'' of curious speci- 
mens of mechanism. Birds whose songs not only emulate 
nature, but that hop from bar to bar; mice that gambol 
nimbly over the floor, and human figures performing upon 
musical instruments in full band; swans swimming in the 
water, and serpents winding themselves up trees, all of 
which is the result of scientific research and experiment. 

I could make another long letter on this subject of the 
British Museum, indeed a book would not do justice to a 
superficial view; but I am admonished that my stay in 
London is coming to a close. 1 must, therefore, hold, my 
pen. It is like a hungry man stopping in the midst of a 



128 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

feast. I have such an appetite for more work in tliis 
world's centre, that I feel, if time served, like pitching my 
tent heie for another month. But I must *'move on." I 
have only two days more in the world's massive capital, 
and must give these to preparation for crossing the chan- 
nel; and then for the gay Gallic City on the banks of the 
Seine. 



LETTER XXYIII. 

" The illustrious house of Hanover 

And Protestant succession, 
To these I do allegiance swear, 

While they can keep possession ; 
For in my faith and loyalty, 

I never more will falter, 
And George my lawful king shall he. 

Until the times do alter." Unknown. 

London, April, 1878 

Before leaving London I determined to take another 
stroll about the Parliament Palace, and look in again upon 
the Houses in session. The day was "fine" (I am borrow- 
ing from John Bull) and the grass had grown full and 
bright upon the inclosure, though the clouds drifted by 
like gloomy spectres. The English climate is ever capri- 
cious, and a few flecks of blue, or a scintilla of sunlight, 
have no longer the power to decoy me into the hope of a 
genial atmosphere. J have been living here quite three 
months, and cannot recall a week of ordinarily pleasant 
weather. 'J'he cold spell in Maich was as severe as at 
home, but the thermometer here is not so steady as with 
us. The natives call it ''beastly" for its tantalizing 
treachery. These barometrical changes make a sad people 
by tempting them into an extravagant consumi)tion of 
beer, brand}^, gin, and rum, even amongst women of the 
better classes; and the soaking, sunless days, and grim, 
gruesome nights, produce a sullen, morbid, and sluggish 
temper. A lady friend, in our hotel, insists that to these 
four liquors, taken frequently in succession, may be attri- 
buted the wife-beatings and riotings common all over the 
kingdom; and that where high and low imbibe heavy 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. ]29 

potations, it is not surprising that so much unhappiness 
exists. 

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we 
stood on the new Westminster Bridge, and with Our 
glasses looked over into the esplanade on the river front, 
where the members of the House of Commons converse, 
and smoke, and take refreshments at intervals in the long 
nights of the summer session. Here they are directly 
within call. I ought to add, that besides other mysterious 
amusements, there is a subterranean passage which con- 
nects both houses with the new Conservative Club, St. 
Stephen's, facing the Embankment, on the opposite side. 
As the House does not meet till shortly before five in the 
afternoon, often sitting far into the night, these retreats on 
the Thames and in the clubs, are closed to the eye of tlie 
multitude, pouring over the broad and sweeping bridge 
opened on the 1st of July, 1862, and pronounced to be the 
largest in Europe. The Houses of Parliament or New 
Palace of Westminster were begun in 184 0, and are, there- 
fore, quite modern, but are almost as discolored as the 
centuried and massive monument of Westminster Hall 
itself. I had the good fortune to see these historic places 
in company with a member of Parliament, who courteously 
secured me an eligible position in the Ladies' Gallery. 
Dusk comes early in London even in April, and the gallery 
looked dark as I entered. It was filled with ladies, old and 
young, and I shortly became accustomed to the dim re- 
ligious gloom, and as the burners in the great hall before 
me were being lighted, they came out like planets in a 
neighboring sky. I had often heard of the jalousies be- 
hind which the ladies are hidden who come to see the 
proceedings of Parliament, with its front of iron fretwork 
and historic exclusiveness; no man being allowed admis- 
sion; all so different from the promiscuous throngs that 
crush into our legislative balconies overhanging the halls 
of Congress at Washington. 

I was anxious to see the faces and listen to the voices 
of the great leaders of public opinion, but before seeking 
for them I tried to comprehend the surroundings. Directly 
below us was the Speaker's throne, and between him and 
our gallery were placed the seats of the parliamentary 
reporters for the various journals, and immediately in 
front of the Speaker, — the desks of the clerks intervening, — . 
were two long, broad benches, the one on the right occu- 
pied by the conservative ministers, and the other on the 



130 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

left b^' the opposition leaders, a large and spacions table 
between them. I tried with the aid of my printed guide 
to disentangle these rival statesmen, whose photographs I 
had seen and studied in the windows of the printshops in 
Bond Street; but I soon abandoned the task. An intelli- 
gent English lady, noticing m^^ disappointment, offered to 
act as my cich'oiie. Discovering that I was an American, 
she became quite communicative, and in a clear, cultivated 
voice, without indicatiug her bias in politics, she said: 
" There is Mr. Gladstone, the tall man with a stoop, a 
prominent nose and thin straggling hair; he is just now 
taking his seat and pulling his hat over his eyes. Now 
you see Mr. Bright, but you Americans know liim so well 
by his face that he needs no biography; see, he is now 
talking to Mr. Bland, the Speaker, the official that we are 
in the habit of calling the first gentleman in England. 
The Speaker has not yet called the House to order, which 
he will presently do. The tall, slender man next to Glad- 
stone is the Marquis of Hartington, the present Liberal 
leader, and directh' at his side is Sir William Harcourt, 
son-in-law of your countryman, the late Mr. Motley, the 
historian ; these are the Liberals, who oppose almost every- 
thing set forth by the Tories, on the bench directly oppo- 
site, to the right of the Speaker. The small, sandy man 
is Sir Stafford Northcote, the Tory leader of the House of 
Commons, and the direct representative of Lord Beacons- 
field. Then you have the Rt. Hon. William Henry Smith, 
Secretar^^ of the Navy or first Lord of the Admiralty, the 
owner of the newspaper circulation of the kingdom; Lord 
John Manners, Postmaster-General, and others." 

And so my English friend, who seemed to be a sort of 
parliamentary directory, continued to describe the great 
leaders of public opinion in the sombre hall below. Pre- 
sently the House came to order, and I remained just long 
enough to hear some of the voices of the speakers and catch 
some of their points. I noticed that Sir Stafford North- 
cote always held his hat in his hand as he spoke, and the 
same was noticeable of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, but 
I learned when they spoke an elaborate harangue, they laid 
down their chapeaux. 

Reluctantly leaving my post I hurried with my Ameri- 
can friends to the House of Lords. Pausing in the lofty 
hall, the approach to Westminster Hall, which is of un- 
equalled magnificence, ranged on either side were the fig- 
ures, larger than life, of the illustrious men, English 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 131 

orators and statesmen, tlie two Pitts, Fox, Burke, Claren- 
don, etc. Before descending tlie flight of steps into West- 
minster Hall I liad a glimpse into the Peers' lobby, and the 
costly splendors of the House of Lords itself. Of several 
hundred peers I do not think twenty were present that 
evening. The Commons are loud and noisy, but the Lords, 
save on very great occasions, pay very little attention to 
tlieir legislative duties. To strangers many of the parlia- 
mentary customs are difficult to understand. The great 
big powdered wigs of the lawyers, the crimson plush of the 
ofHcials, the liveried servants, the omnipresent dignity and 
adulation, are confusing indeed, especially when the real 
great ones, like Disraeli, Derby, Stanley, and the various 
dukes and earls, move around you in tlie dress of ordinary 
mortals, and only don their stars and garters on state oc- 
casions. I wish I could give you some idea of the interior 
splendors of this palace of Parliament, but it defies my 
descriptive powers. 

Now for the beautiful and venerable building, Westmin- 
ster Hall, founded by William Rufus in 1097, and rebuilt by 
Richard II in 1399, where he frequently kept his Christmas, 
and entertained ten thousand guests a day; the largest 
saloon in Europe unsui)ported by pillars, 270 feet long, 74 
feet wide, and 90 feet high. This great hall was designed 
for royal banquets and coronation feasts; courts of justice 
were conducted here in early times, the sovereign himself 
presiding; here, too, courts of impeachment have been 
conducted, and here William Wallace, Sir Thomas More, 
Protector Somerset, the lamented Earl Strafford, minister 
of Charles, and that equally ill-fated sovereign, were tried 
and convicted. Here also Warren Hastings was subjected 
to that protracted ordeal for his misconduct in India, de- 
fended and opposed by such intellects as Sheridan, Burke, 
and their contemporaries. The last coronation-dinner was 
held here by George IV. Outside is a large paved square 
into which the equipages of the members of the two Houses 
of Parliament are driven, and from which they pass into 
their respective halls. As we stood, many celebrated char- 
acters who passed were designated to me by name; some 
were' late, evidently just coming from dinner, and others 
seem to have been sent for for what is a call of the House. 
Opposite the north front of the hall is the Parish Church 
of St. Margaret, begun in the reign of Edward 1, where 
many great and noble men are buried; Caxton the printer, 
Sir Waller Raleigh, Admiral Howard of the fleet in the 



132 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

time of the Spanish Armada, and very man}' equally dis- 
tinguished. 

1 have now heard some of the most distinguished orators 
of England, and of those who spoke this evening, Sir Strat- 
ford IS'ortlicote makes the least pretensions to oratory ; a 
pleasing, rather tenor voice; liis rhetoric is clear and dis- 
tinct. Lord John Manners has a bokl, manly style. Sir 
Kobert Peel, who took part in the debate behind the min- 
isterial benches, was very fearless, and was followed by a 
])erfect chorus of "Hear, liear, hear." JVIr. Bright spoke 
most like an American, with a rather coaxing voice, yet 
distinct and capable of rising into a fine volley of eloquence. 
Mr. Gladstone is evidently very much idolized b}^ his con- 
stituents, and the little he said proved tiiat he was master 
of the Liberal situation. I regretted that I had not heard 
Loid Beaconsfield in the Peers; but one cannot see ever}-- 
thing and everybody, and so I was obliged to economize my 
opportunities, and to choose my days from the time 1 had 
allotted in this great English centre. 



LETTER XXIX. 

" When France in wrath her giant limbs npreared. 
And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, 
Stamp'd her strong foot and said she would oe free, — 
* ***** 

Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, 
And shot my being through eai-th. sea, and air, 
Possessing all things witli intensest love, 
O Liberty ! my spirit felt thee there." 

COI^ERIDGE. 

Paris, April, 1878. 

When we steamed out of Victoria Station this morning, 
bidding adieu to the damp and dusky capital, the antici- 
pated gayety of another strange world gave a fresh zest to 
iny spirits ; but alas 1 the other vision of the Dover nai-- 
rows with the short, chopping billows hoisting the boat 
fore and aft ; the rush of waters under the keel ; and a host 
of sick and prdlid passengers, with my own white visage as 
the frontispiece to the tableau, was an antidote to all ex- 
uberant expectation. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 133 

We started in the early morning before the snn had cut 
away the gray-white mist and kissed the dew from fresh 
green nature. After flying along several miles I realized 
for the first time the transcendent beauty of the English 
landscape. 

The charms of Cheshire and Warwickshire were height- 
ened by the presence of vast wealth and the memory of 
noble deeds. Here it was not the romance of history and 
the glory of genius, but nature's radiant features that de- 
lighted my senses. Soon Phoebus spread forth his shining 
morning mantle, and the English spring blushed around 
us. The open arras of the great limes and maples seemed 
to court the welcome warmth. The broad stretches and 
slopes of herbage had grown brilliant and strong under his 
influence, and the little field flowers shone in vivid lustre 
under the raj's of the sun ; and in all this variety and 
beaut}^ of color I experienced my first ecstasy for anything 
English. In the months that I had devoted to Westmin- 
ster Abbey, filled with the splendors of the dead, or to 
Westminster Hall ablaze with the glory of the living ; to 
the Tower that holds and hides tiie dark mysteries and 
miseries of the past, or to the crooked lanes and cramped 
alleys of the slums of the city that cradle and generate 
the sin, squalor, and starvation of the present; to the pal- 
aces of wealth or to the prisons of crime and cruelty; to 
the fashion and frivolity of the Royal Oi)era, or to the 
hush of the churches ; to the homes of the poets and po- 
tentates or the holes of paupers; wherever I turned my 
steps, there seemed something mournful and mortal. 

On we whirled through wooded tracts, by rushing rivers, 
sharp defiles and gentle slopes, till old Canterbury town, 
with its campanile towers, its deca3'ing gateways that had 
canopied the two youthful monarchs, Henry VIIl and 
Charles Y, on tiie long-gone Whitsunday, its century- 
touched cathedrals and baronies were in perspective. Over 
the vale came the sweet silver chime of the turret-bells, in 
music as chaste as if fet. Thomas a Becket's blood had 
never marred its peaceful sanctity. 

Soon the flowering banks of the Medway and its oft-trod 
paths by saintlike pilgrims were left far behind, and before 
us rose the white clifts of Dover, crowned by castle battle- 
ments, protected by watch-towers, and lapped by the dark 
Channel wave. Upon a soft green hill a flock of white sheep 
were browsing. The red roof of a farm-house shone against 
the blue-gray sky, and bare- limbed chubby children were 
12 



134 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

scattering feed to a brood of 3 oiing fowls. In the peace 
of the dulcet Sunday noon and hnzy English atmosphere, 
this picture seemed like an animated Creswick, Ruskin, or 
Birket Foster. More loftj^ still looked the blinding hills of 
chalk in the rnj's of the mounted sun. " The murm'ring 
surge that on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, cannot 
be iicard so high ; and the fishermen that walk upon the 
beach appear like mice." There was a crush of craft in 
the strait and at anchor in the harbor of the only existing 
quay of the Cinque Ports of William. Our royal barge to 
Calais was moored to the pier; it was not a burnished 
throne that lurned on the water, neither were the sails 
purple or perfumed ; no silver oars, no luscious women re- 
clining upon couches of violets or golden tissue cloth, no 
smiling, dimpled cupids wielding fans of Oriental dyes, no 
oallant Mercury or dazzling Apollo. No! in one feature 
alone did the barque resemble that of Cleopatra when she 
floated down the Cydnus to meet her Antony, and this was 
'• from the baige a strange invisible perfume hits the sense 
of the adjacent wharfs." 

Crossing the Channel was a ghost that had haunted me 
Ion"-. The strait has been the scene of thousand of ca- 
hiniities, exi)eriments, and expeditions for as mauy years; 
and here it tumbles and threatens the human travel that 
l)ours over it now as in the long-gone centuries: travel 
ever changing, but this eternal tide the same. 

A crowded boat with a melange of j)asseiigers from every 
nation and speaking every tongue; gross men and generous 
n)aidens, shrill screams of porters and seamen; a steam 
and stench of cooking, and as the steamer dropped down 
the Channel and Albion's snowy banks receded from our 
view, 1 descended to the stuff}^, noxious cabin. I contem-, 
plated distiess from the sleei)less sea, and am too well ac- 
quainted with the nature of my humid, turbulent enemy to 
take libeities with him. For awhile all went '^ merry as a 
marriage bell," and the joyous laughter of those who had 
been more daring than I, and remained on the upper deck, 
reached my ear in mockery of my cowardice ; but ray spirit 
was strong and my stomach was weak, and I heeded not 
their taunts. "At length their high-blown pride broke un- 
der them," and as I lay with closed eyes and calm soul, I 
could hear the mourners descending to my level. They ar- 
rived in detachments, and sore were their lamentations for 
their lost ones. The god of the trident had been merciless 
in his shower of afllictions ui>on my companions ; he had 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 135 

deprived them oftheii* dearest and nearest treasures. To 
me he had granted all comfort because upon first action I 
had so submissively yielded all vanity. In this attribute 
of character at least, a god does not differ from mortal 
man. When we touched the fair shores of Gaul the afflicted 
were worn and weary with long suffering and I was com- 
paratively buoyant. 

Once upon the soil of Charlemagne and Clovis, the fair 
land washed by the English Channel and tiie Bay of Bis- 
cay; irrigated by the Seine, the Loire, and the Rhone; 
and sheltered b}^ the Vosges, Jura, Alps, and Pyrenees, 
the entire earth's face seemed to have undergone a radical 
change. I was about to say reform, for such is my honest 
conviction, but the word would perhaps offend the quiet 
and puritanic discipline of the isle we had quitted. Here 
with a Gallic sun pouring down upon me, the light white 
earth beneath my feet, the brisk, energetic movements, and 
the shrill, nasal tones of the Frenchman upon every side, 
the shackles that had oppressed me in the dark metropolis 
dropped with the first breath of French republicanism. 
Liberty was all around us! For the first time the soul of 
the freed man throbbed within me, and then only I defined 
the weight of roj^alty that had pulled me down. The carol 
of birds, the soft, sighing breeze, the running stream, the 
intensely blue and fervently clear heavens, the young 
waving wheat, the joyous spirit of the peasant, the willing 
toil of the farmers, and the happy, thrifty cottage homes, 
sang one universal cantata of brotherhood, equality, and 
prosperity. 

Before taking our places in the carriage at Calais, our 
baggage was weighed and registered; here I had my first 
experience in the Continental custom of paying for the 
transition of all baggage exceeding sixty-six pounds indi- 
vidually. These figures vary slightly as one passes from 
one country into another. 

Of all travellers the Englishman invariably conveys with 
him the greatest amount of personal paraphernalia. Such 
cumbrous articles! To say nothing of the trunks and 
chests innumerable stowed in the baggage car, several 
portmanteaus, hat-boxes, bundles of countless umbrellas 
and canes, the inevitable bath-tub, and frequently a fold- 
ing-chair, to the horror and inconvenience of all other 
occupants are brought into the carriage. 

Resting here over half an hour for dinner — of course the 
Englishman eats at every station-boutfet he meets — the 
shrill, screechy whistle of the French locomotive was 



136 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

blown, and the thin, screechy voice of the French conduc- 
tor was heard in his native vernacular of "All aboard." 

It was all beautiful, all novel, and all sparkling! The 
white roads wound about tlie green fields in striking con- 
trast, and here and there in clear outline was the crimson 
dress of a i)easant child. As we passed through the Val- 
ley of the Somine this bright, warm Sunday afternoon, the 
fields were filled with men and woman tilling the ground 
and sowing the seeds of prosperity and happiness. The 
majority of the earth cultivators were women past middle 
age, in coarse shoes tied at the ankle, and blue stockings, 
short petticoats, and bareheaded, or perhaps a large towel 
wound about the forehead for protection from the heat; 
the men always appearing in the blue blouse, the heraldic 
ensign of the French ouvrier. 

We seemed passing away from the neatly combed hedges ; 
straggling meagre lines of shrubbery or slat fences taking 
their place. Great forests of lofty poplars grew in lines 
as precise as if they had been placed by a master surveyor. 
After stopping at Crecy, where Edward the ''Black Prince" 
won the feathers more than five centuries ago, that "Albert" 
the present Prince continues to wear; and at Amiens, the 
principal town of Picardy, and famous for the treaty here 
signed which placed the English and French once more 
npon amicable ground, and for the signal victory and sub- 
sequent possession of the German forces in the autumn of 
1870 — we dashed on to Paris. As we approached the great 
capital the fantastic mode of trimming and training the 
trees, and artistic devices of the vegetable gardens greatly 
impressed me. 

Ah ! Paris! Dashing, dancing, dazzling, insouciant Paris. 
I came upon you just as the evening Angelus was chiming 
forth its sweet and solemn melod}^ You looked like a 
newlj^-arrayed bride, whose snowy garments were yet un- 
soiled, whose spirit was yet nncrushed by the cares of 
added years and sorrows, while the sinking sun hung in a 
halo of burnished gold over your brow! 

The little voitures de place with cocher^ in crimson vest 
and black shiny oilcloth hat, were flying over the cleanly 
swept streets like so many fire-flies. The great white 
hotels were joyous with the sparkle of life. The gay 
boulevards were shaded by tall, waving trees and filled 
with pleasure-seekers. All along the sidewalks and in front 
of the cafes were clusters of little iron tables and chairs, 
and knots of happ}^ care-free people chatting and sipi)ing 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 13l 

the dilated Biirgundy or coffee au petitf^-verres. The 
mechanic laid down his hammer and trowel, and descended 
high scaffolds as the church and convent bells rang six. 
The flower, fruit, and vegetable shops had their merchan- 
dise displayed to tlie purchasing public in inviting and 
infinite gaudy groups. Passing through the Place de 
I'Opera to the Rue de la Paix I cauglit a glimpse of tlie 
exterior glories of the New Opera House, and away off 
directly facing me shone the golden citadel of Des Inca- 
lides. 

Need I say how I enjoyed my first dinner in the delicious 
little French hotel, after existing upon English cookery 
for months ? 

The agitating question was, " Wiiat to do after dinner?" 
One of the sinners of our Uttle coterie proposed the tiieatre, 
which the saints vetoed at once by a horrified negative ex- 
clamation. I objected, not because m}^ religious principles 
forbade me the pleasure. — / consider it a duty of a voyager 
to conform to all rules of all countries — but the evening 
was excessively warm, and I fatigued with travel. After 
much discussion, the wicked element prevailed; has it not 
ever been so since the seduction of Eve? and we beguiled 
our pious brethren into a visit to the cafe chantant on the 
Chami)s Elysee. All along the Rue de Rivoli the great 
lamps swung in the dark arches of the colonnades; oppo- 
site were the liglits and marble urns, and vertical lines of 
trees of the TuUeries, where the flowers slept, and the in- 
sects droned, and the fountain spray fell in silver music. 
A wild, roving, rollicking concourse jostled each other in 
the Place de la Concorde, rode in the revolving chairs, 
turned in the elevated wheels, and enjoyed the delectable 
luxury of getting sea-sick in swinging boats upon dry land. 
The booths and vendors of lemonade, pastries, and beer 
were in the full flush of trade, and from the concert-gardens 
came the melody of the merry, ambiguous chansons. The 
gnrden was crowded with the better class of men, women, 
and children, and a great number from the aristocratic 
circles, if one may form an opinion from clothing and con- 
duct; there was no intoxication, though the two francs' 
admission included a very bad glass of beer, brandy, wine, 
or any other kind of liquor. Upon a small covered stage 
the actresses and actors sang their songs, cut their antics, 
turned their somersaults, and seemed to enjoy it as much 
as I heir audience. 

Back through tjie starlit, glorious city of Sevigne, and 



138 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Maiiitenon, De Stael, Roland, Recamier, Jeanne d'Arc, 
Antoinette, Josephine, Eugenie, and all the literary and 
social lights tliat have illumined the bright capital, to my 
sixth-story chamber, looking out upon that panorama in 
bronze of the victories of the "Lieutenant of Artillery" — 
the Column Yendome — I came to sleep away my first night 
in the White City. 



LETTER XXX. 

*' John Bull for pastime took a prance, 
Some time ago to peep at France, 
To talk of sciences and arts, 
And knowledge gained in foreign parts. 
Monsieur, obsequious, heard him speak, 
And answered John in heathen Greek, 
To all lie asked 'bout all he saw, 
'T was, Monsieur, Je voiis ro^entends pas.''^ 

DiBDTF. 

Paris, April, 1878. 

I CANNOT reconcile myself to the Frenchman's idea of 
an aristocratic tifth or sixth-story chamber. Jt is consid- 
ered decidedly plebeian to occupy apartments on the ground- 
floor or the eriiresol ; these are exclusively for servants. 
The premier etage of the French domicile is in reality our 
third-stor^'-, and when I rise in the morning and gaze 
through or over the jalousies of my elevated window, upon 
the pygmian horses and carts, and surging population — 
dwarfed by the heigiit — a sense of distress, and poverty, 
and confinement as in an old tower, comes over me. I can 
sympathize with, not satirize, the little village-girl, who 
travelled to Paris in search of the recreant lover, whom 
she had heard was ill, and while mounting five or six pairs 
of stairs, exclaimed, '' Mon Dieu, how poor he must be!" 
but flung open the door of his salon to meet a blaze of 
light and gold and fresco; Aubusson rugs, and lace, and 
damask hangings; the sparkle of champagne, the heavy 
aroma of sweet perfumes, and the laughter of women. It 
is ever so here; palatial parlors next the roof: all very 
beautiful and bewildering vhen you reach the sky-cham- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 139 

bers ; but the journey is tedious, and there is no American 
elevator. 

There is a rare sweetness in the air of Paris, a radiance 
indeed so different from London, that I feel already at 
home in its broad streets, bright society, and happy indus- 
tries. I so gladly miss the constant fog, that has clung 
about me for the past three months in the great English 
city like a wet garment. I like the utter abandon of man- 
ner, and the holiday appearance of the multitudes who sit 
along the boulevards and avenues sipping their vin ordin- 
aii^e, cafe noir^ or absinthe, or eating galette, — a crisp, 
flaky piece of pie-crust, made as onlj- the French can make 
patisserie. I like the popular passion for strolling along 
the highways, and 1 join the legion of flaneurs^ as they 
are called, to saunter along the Boulevarde des Italiens, 
Haussmann, des Capucines, Montmartre, and in the Rue 
de la Paix, to gaze in the wide-awake shops ; every shop a 
show, and every show anew invention ; from an odd game 
to a cheap dress, from a figure that talks to a toy full of 
tunes ; from a game that tells fortunes to a watch that is a 
barometer ; from a cane that is an umbrella, to a portman- 
teau that will kill the robber who would steal it. I like to 
see the bare-headed, blue-bloused workmen, the white- 
ca[)ped bonnes and the babies, the jeune Jille of the middle 
class, who never dons a bonnet, but enhances the beaut}^ of 
her pretty face and large liquid eyes by coquettishly wear- 
ing Alsacian bows of black velvet ; the paper-capped cooks 
of the cafes, the gamins spinning their tops, and the gay 
booths with their flaunting exhibitions. It is all so jo^^ous, 
jolly, and jubilant. A wild scene without intoxication, a 
saturnalia without open sin, a revelry that stimulates. The 
population has the appearance of our fellow-countrymen, 
and one thought is ever paramount, 'tis so like home. 
Along the new Avenue de I'Opera the dazzling facades of 
the six and seven-story white edifices stare me almost to 
blindness. They aie just from the artisan's hand, yet the 
exteriors are scarcely whiter than the ateliers and hotels 
that have braved the elements many years, so bright and 
pure is the climate. Row after row of these magnificent 
new structures have large placards in the windows bearing 
the words " a /otter." A young gentleman in our circle, 
who possesses a rather limited knowledge of the Gallic 
tongue, asked me what '' d /ouer" (allure) meant? I re- 
plied, with surprise, "allure;" you surely understand the 
word, to decoy, entice, beguile; not realizing my fiiend 



140 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

was reading tlie French sign, "to rent," witli his English 
tongue, and liis reply was, "What an odd way these 
French have of wording their signs." Poor fellow ! he now 
believes that the landlords of the Avenue de I'Opera intend 
to decoy tenants into their property by fair means or foul. 
The Boulevarde des Italiens is a banquet for the eyes, the 
ears, the palate, and the memory. In its bazars of confec- 
tions^ bijouterie, and display of Disderi photography; in its 
Grand Opera, Theatre Cleverman, Theatre des Fantasies 
Parisiennes, the Oi)era Comique, and 'J'heatre Italien ; in 
its epicurean cafea^ as the famous Maison-Doree, Cafe Res- 
taurant Tortoni, Cafe Cardinal and Riche ; and its ever- 
varying, never-ceasing flow of life, into the Boulevaide 
Montmartre ; here we passed the Theatre des Varieties, 
and 1 paused to read the playbills upon the boards. I 
catch the name of Judic, and at once I determine to stroll 
into this playiiouse some evening soon to hear and see the 
fair, fat Frenchwoman, of whom we Americans have read 
so much, and whose photographs are floating tiirough the 
United States in shoals. Right and left are S3'baritic 
restaurants and cafes ; cafes occupying the upper stories 
of theatres and bazars ; and so on and on we wander 
through the changeful kaleidoscope, until the princely 
establishments dciienerate into eatingr-houses or bouillies, 
the opera-house into circuses and third-class shows, the 
voitiwes are few and pedestrians seldom, and we find our- 
selves upon tlie very confines of the town. In this quar- 
tier we came upon tlie Church of Notre Dame de Loiette, 
a place of worship celebrated for its interior sum['tuous 
decorations, animated and inert. This highly artistic 
temple is considered one of the curiosities of Paris, be- 
cause it is sustained and frequented by an aristocratic and 
rather ambiguous sisterhood assuming " a virtue if they 
have it not," whose beauty is splendor, and whose toilets 
are regal ; as a fraternity they wear the name " lorettes" 
from the oratory in which they pray ; if pray they ever 
do! It seems their only object in assembling in the sanc- 
tuary is to fan the flame of envy in each other's degenerate 
hearts, by the prodigality and anticipated rivalry of cos- 
tume, and seek expiation of their sins through the medium 
of their tarnished gold dropped into the hoite pour les 
paucres. 

To hail a fl}- and ride back through the highways we had 
trodden, gave us another dazzling effect of the scenes in 
the changeful drama. The city appeared to be arrayed in 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 141 

carniva.1 reo^alia, and this I attribute to the inauguration of 
the Exposition Universelle ui)on the Champ de Mars to- 
morrow ; but old residents tell me tlieir city is ever so. 
Paris is a universal playhouse, where the farce, the comedy, 
the melodrama, and tragedj' blend one in the other, but 
where the curtain never falls. Whether it be an act of sin, 
sorrow, or shame, a spectacle of pomp and hypocrisy, all 
are clothed in the garments of pleasure and viitue. These 
French comj)rehend the true philosophy of life. Every 
phase of existence seems to possess its charm for them. 
Their woik is not toil, because they go to it with brave 
hearts and willing hands and transform it into sport. 
Happiness is not ostentation and opulence, but the calm 
peace of occupation and a strong fervent heart. Their do- 
mestic tasks and social pleasures are all performed with 
the zest that a Frenchman alone claims, and so mingled 
that labor becomes play. In the heart of the industrious 
Parisian, "all time is a temple, and all seasons summer.'' 

In the Place du Palais Royal, just where the jetties of 
two fountains were casting their spray in a radiate circle, 
we dismissed the little French cabriolet and entered the ar- 
cades of the edifice that was erected by Cardinal Richelieu. 

You dine at the Palais Royal, in the Cafe, Vefour^ ele- 
gantly; and though the price is high, the supply is plen- 
tiful — cheap, as you remember that you dine upon and 
drink in history. The Arcade in which this superb res- 
taurant is placed is gorgeous in gilt, glass, and statuary. 
It is girdled with the superb shops of Paris, chiefly of 
jewels and watches. These shops are fairy shows, solitary 
in the da}^, but at night thronged with customers and 
crowds in every costume and from every country, while in 
the hollow square in front there are dancers to the band 
that pla3's at intervals in the afternoon, and a multitude of 
children. The elegance of the dinners at the Cafe Vefour 
attracts epicures from all lands ; but if you desire to enjoy 
them at leisure, you must come early. When the tide is in 
you can hardly secure a chair; indeed, from six to nine, 
Paris is a great dinner world — eager, hungry, polite, fas- 
tidious, if you please, but still violently hungry. After 
enjoying a plentiful variety, we emerged into the outer 
world of the Palais Royal. It was a Whirlpool of light and 
life, music and conversation — a Babel of sounds, a Solo- 
mon's Temple of splendors. Here we saw the ravages of 
the Commune, on the 24th of May, 18*71, and the restored 
Palace of the Louvre and the new Hotel du Louvres. It 



142 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

was an easy stroll along the Rue Rivoli homewards, imrler 
tlie stars, yet every rood of our progress was made instruc- 
tive l\y some rare nov^elty and l>y the surging mass from 
tlie P^'rench provinces and the great towns of the European 
Continent, centring here to be present at the opening of 
the Exhibition Universelle to-morrow. 



LETTER XXXI. 

*' Ring out false pride in place and blood, 
The civic slander and the spite ; 
King in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of Good !" 

Tennyson. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

It is past midnight, and still the shuffle of feet, the hum 
of voices, the sliouts of the revellers, and the strains of the 
" Marseillaise," nre heard in the broad and l)rilliant street 
below, as I sit in my upper chaml)er attempting to organize 
tlie impressions of the Exposition — to-day's wonderful 
pageant of wealth, nobility, and popular enthusiasm — 
before tlie memory is dimmed by other si)lendors. 

Yesterday morning when I walked through the unfin- 
ished temple of art and industry, legions of mechanics, 
and decorators, and laborers were busy in the work of 
completion, or at least striving to reduce the halls from 
their present state of anarch}^ to a condition suitable for 
the reception of princes and potentates. We waded through 
an ocean of debris, the dust of sweepers, the shavings and 
shingles of sawyers, and the vibration of hammers, to the 
English Department, which, under the master-hand of P. 
Cunliffe Owen, C.B., who is Secretary of the Royal Com- 
mission, already wears a garb of completeness, while her sur- 
rounding companions are still crude and unfinished. How 
this vast building was ever to be transformed from chaos 
to order by the morrow I could not define. After visiting 
General McCormick in his private sanctum, we met in the 
American section John Russell Young, the companion and 
diarist of General Grant, Henry Pettit, the enthusiastic 
and efficient draughtsman of the American Buildings, and 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 143 

Monsignore Capel, the hero of Lothair^ who has received 
an a[)otheosis from the London females, whose heads and 
hearts he swaj^s b^^ his priesth^ eloquence, lie has the 
portly distinction of a churchman and the subtle elegance 
of a courtier. A man who comprehends the secrets of 
winning voluntary concession from all he addresses — 
socially or profession all}' — 1 had longed to see in his 
pulpit in London. His villa, not far from the confines of 
the great citv, the former residence of the comedian 
Sothern, a really boronial estate, now has changed from 
the Sybaritic home of the plaj'er to the sanctuary of the 
prelate. 

1 will neither compare nor criticize the French national 
displays now. Such a proceeding would be a gross injus- 
tice, and wiien I do speak of them, if I am not the most 
impartial judge, forgive me and remember that all m^'- 
opinions are biassed by one fact: I am an i\merican, and 
lived in Philadelphia during the incomparable Centennial 
Exhibition of 1876. But in passing, 1 may say the exte- 
rior of the palaces on the Champs de Mars are artistic and 
showy without being flaunting; gay without being gaudy; 
ornate and chaste even in the combination of rude, ruddy 
fresco, and fa§ades c f vivid wooden fretwork, and colored 
glass, sustained by robust caryatides of the nations over 
whose heads float the standards and streamers of tiieir re- 
spective lands. Whatever a Frenchman touches seems to be 
made graceful. What his work lacks of pomp and potency, 
It possesses in delicacy and purity; so it is with the temples 
nestled on the left bank of the Seine, against the grassy 
slopes of Auteuil and Passj^ Still an emotion of sadness 
thrills me as I meditate upon the unfinished structures; 
such utter incompleteness seems to presage failure to the 
exhibition of the republicans, and a stimulant to the hopes 
of the imperialists and Bourbons of the Faubourg St. 
Germain, who want it to fail. The citv is overflowing 
with strangers, and hotel and cafe prices are proportion- 
ately extortionate. 

When 1 rose this morning there was a rustle and bustle 
of busy life in the Place Vendoine, in the Rue St. Honore, 
in the Rue de Rivoli; and as far as my eye could reach, 
or the ear catch a sound, there were evidences of pleasure- 
bent throngs in the motley concourse <^f pedestrians, the 
incessant beat of horses' hoofs, and the whirl of wheels. 
Of course every one was going towards the Champ de 
Mars; those who were fortunate enough to possess credeii- 



144 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

tials of admittance to royalty would cross the Pont de 
Jena, and be ensconced under the peristyle of the Troca- 
dero, or at one of the upper windows of the Exhibition 
Building, while the millions of the democracy would crowd 
the highways and avenues, not knowing or caring so much 
for tlie princes or the pageantry as to mingle in and swell 
the populace. The day dawned fairly, but the sun wore 
upon his face a sultry smile of treacher>', and though we 
started in a burst of brightness for the installation, by 
solemn and political ritual of the first industrial, social, 
and national event under the republican regime^ before we 
had crossed the Pont de la Concorde, nature was ardu- 
ously striving to drown every hope and aspiration of the 
new government. The situation of those poor deluded 
mortals in the open noitures and cabriolets — I was one of 
the damp, drizzled stars comprising this galax}^ — was dis- 
mal and desperate to the last degree while heaven's bless- 
ings were descending in a watery superfluity. Though my 
mood was not amiable, I did not indulge it to the top of 
its bent; there were so many not any worse, and still so 
much worse off than myself. Hundreds of nevvl3'-dressed, 
fashionably-dressed, and expensively-dressed daughters of 
Eve waded through lakes of mud and mire, until starched 
skirts and lofty exi)ectations wilted away together. 

After waitino- one and a half or two hours in the Ameri- 
can section 1 heard a flourish of trumpets and roll of drums, 
which announced the approach of the cortege. The time 
passed in anticipating the monarchical and military display 
was not calculated to promote good temper. Front stalls 
at the windows were at a premium and unsatisfactory; if 
you attempted to retain one after securing it, some indi- 
vidual of ineflTable avoirdupois rested a portion of his bur- 
den upon your shoulders, although his own were broader; 
if a gallant — seeing your discomfort — offered you a chair, 
your gratitude was quick in all save the acceptance; to 
abandon 30ur post was to make a voluntary and permanent 
consignment to the too solid enemy, and so meditating you 
concluded to rather "bear the ills 3'ou had than fly to 
others that you knew not of." 

All around there was a clatter and chatter of French; 
the Americans were few, and seemed hushed into utter 
silence by the Gallic gabble. From the Trocadero, over 
the Pont de Jena, sanctified in the baptism of angels' tears, 
came the Prince of Wales, bright scion of the house of 
Hanover, fair, fat, and not yet forty. As he passed the 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 145 

American pavilion he raised his chapean, and a shout 
greeted him from the Yankees. It is said Wales has a 
hearty liking for us Americans, and is a good deal of a 
republican; but then most royal heirs are democrats until 
they take the reins into their own hands. The future Eng- 
lish monarch has a good face, very like iiis portraits; and 
although it poured upon his regal umbrella there was a 
jolly smile beneath. The old Marshal President Mac- 
Mahon looked like a bouquet of daisies, his face all piiik, 
and his hair and moustache all white, but with a ralher 
angry and crestfallen air, as if he felt his seat in the execu- 
tive chair to be insecure, and though loatli to relinquish 
the baton, so far has failed to devise any polic^^ to strengthen 
himself. He was followed by the ex-king of Spain, husband 
of the famous, or infamous, Isabella. A little spindle- 
shanks, hobbling along in all his finery, a poor, useless 
Hidalgo living in Paris at an immense cost to the Spanish 
treasury. Then came a huddle of dignitaries lost in pud- 
dles of mire; while we were dr3' they were draggled. Had 
the day been bright it would have been grand, no doubt ; 
but the democratic gods rained down their most impartial 
favors, even upon the pride and plumes of kings and princes. 
Princes and sovereigns they were, it is true, and yet only 
men. And then — well, then I rode home with the weight 
of this vanquishing conviction — the pa7'ade did not pay for 
the pains f 

The sun broke through his humid shroud just as he sank 
behind tiie wooded heights of Grenelle and Auteuil, gilding 
the tops of the monuments, and glorifying the open spaces 
in which they stood. With the closing day the crowd had 
augmented; grisettes and students of the Latin Quartier; 
crimson-pantalooned soldiers from the garrisons; the dis- 
abled veterans of Des Invalides; the ouvrier of the Rue 
Saint Antoine; the di|)loma4ists and financiers of the Fau- 
bourg St. Honore; the Legitimist of the Faubourg St. 
Germain ; the wit, artist, and literati of the Chaussee 
d'Antin; the bourgeois, and tiie old crone, weather-beaten 
and time-worn, in black petticoat, white cap, and kerchief 
folded over her breast, a la Marie Antoinette, to be found 
in every cranny of the city, were gathered in one i)romiscu^ 
ous melange. The sun had fallen quite asleep behind the 
portes of the white town; the hour of six had rung through 
the arrondissements ; the upper-tendom of Paris were din- 
ing in hotel, cafe and private salons ; but the great holida}' 
was not over; it was only opening. 
18 



146 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

As twilight unfurled her dark curtains, busy hands and 
brave hearts were actix'el}^ engaged in the labor of decora- 
tion. The fa9ades of all the public buildings and even the 
churciies were ablaze with patriotic devices in colored lights, 
and banners and pennons floated from ever}' window. The 
great lamps in the colonnades, the lights of the Tuileries, 
the stars in the dark, clear heavens, had transformed the 
white macadamized road of the Rue de Rivoii- into a sea 
of brightness. Through it poured a mass of happy, free 
l)eople from the Hue ISt. Antoine. Were it not for the 
weird ruins of the palace staring at us like a spectre, we 
would be prone to fcn-get to-night that seven years ago tlie 
same populace rushed through the same highway, fiends 
and petroleuses, sowing the seeds of sedition, and sin, and 
desolation in their pathway. The Champs Elysees tliat 
were then a charred and blackened desert are now bright 
with the glory of a new republic. There is no sad regret 
for the fate of the fair Austrian, Marie Antoinette, in the 
Place de la Concorde to-night. Every wall, rampart, and 
bridge is bathed in a phosphorescence of splendor and pride, 
and '''' Liberie^ Egalite^et Fi^ateriiiie^^'' shine not in blood 
but in fire. To-night the memory of wretched crimes, 
fruitless pra3-ers, and the guillotine, is dead in the Place 
de la Bastile. The radiant Palais de I'Jndustrie, the head- 
quarters of the Teutonic enemy seven years ago, to night 
sheds a free French lustre over the Elysee, and all the Rue 
Royale is dazzling in the halo of the Madelaine. 

The night has been a deserved cora[)ensation for the dis- 
mal incidents of the day to the actors and spectators at the 
Exposition. I had read of a Paris |)opula('e; 1 iiad studied 
the Centennial in 1876, when Philadelphia was deluged by 
strangers; 1 had i-een the tluongs of today, but had formed 
no idea of the sight after twilight on this first of May in 
the French ca[)ital. It was all so wild and tumultuous; I 
was the atom of the poet and this was really 

"Ocean into tempest tost, 
To waft a feather and to drown a fly." 

T was less than a feather or a fly, and in the heedless 
whirl was borne along like a cloud before a great storm. 
It was a fantastic, turbulent saturnalia. Yet there was a 
strange sense of safety in the delirious mass; all were 
happy, and no one was intoxicated by liquor. The horses 
were driven to one side, and the glad people filled the 
broad boulevards with song, and shout, and hymn, and 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 147 

cliorus, until I caught the contagion of their ecstasy. 
Tliere was a pause, an eddy in the oreat driving current of 
the great human sea, formed by a side-way in a wide avenue, 
and 1 floated into it toward my home. I had seen and 
heard enough to understand it all. The French were en- 
joying the first real sense of their liberty in a long lapse of 
years, and 1 did not marvel that the welcome draught had 
temporarily stolen away their senses. 



LETTER XXXII. 

" The French have taste in all they do, 
While we are quite without ; 
For Nature that to them gave gout.^ 
To us gave only gout." 

Erskine. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

I ROSE early this morning to watch the city undergo the 
cleansing process. The buckets, and tubs, and pans of 
offal were arranged as primly along the curbs as vases upon 
a parlor mantel. There was nothing slovenly or repulsive 
iUL the sight, even of the garbage. The passion for artistic 
and artificial effect is innate with the French, and it is ap- 
parent in the minutest affairs. The chiffonnier and his 
wife were already at woik under my window, raking 
amongst dust-heaps in the street and ashes and refuse upon 
the pavement. Sometimes they would lightly toss the 
contents of barrels or boxes with their long forks — gener- 
ally a bent wire or nail in the end of a stick — and turn 
away with an expression of disgust and disappointment, 
failing in their search for prizes. Over the next pail they 
would linger, and dive deeper and deeper at each effort. 
Some of these heaps of debris were veritable olla podridas 
yielding crumpled paper-bags, old rags, pieces of coal, dirty 
strings, bones innumerable, stale pieces of bread, and nests 
of snarly hair, which they tucked away with great caution 
and classification into the several pockets of the long, 
narrow, leathern sack hanging upon the left arm. The 
rolls of hair, however dusty and tangled and interwoven 
they might be with other matter, whether from the moult- 



148 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

ing of mistress or maid, countess or cook, blonde or bru- 
nette, were sj)eciiil booty. These locks rescued from pol- 
lution are sold to tlie coiffeur^ antl after passing tlirougli 
his purif3ang hands again adorn the heads of us poor, un- 
suspecting females in pufls, waves, crimps, and frizzles. 
Tiien as tiie wagons came along to cart away the residuum, 
and the water was turned on at every corner, running 
through the gutters as pure and limpid as a mountain 
spring, the weary chiffonnier sat down upon the curbstone 
to take his breakfast of black bread or to gnaw a spare 
])one, perhaps Irom the spoils of his morning ramble. 
Groups of mechanics were sliufiling through the streets 
now, and fair Paris greeted them in her freshly-made 
toilet. 

Inside the toil of the day had also begun. How differ- 
ent and how much more arduous ai'e the tasks of tliese 
foreign servants compared with the labor of our domestiques 
at home ! Yet liere they are all apparentl}^ happy, while 
in America the same classes join in a universal chorus of 
dissatisfaction, .leanne, our neat little y<^w?/ie de chambre, 
told me yesterday — her spare English aided by my limited 
French — she had the care of sixt}^ chambers, all of these 
containing one or more beds, and that the hot and cold 
water for these apartments has to be carried over many 
pairs of stairs, and through many corridors, as they have 
not the American accessories of stationary washstands ; 
and i)Oor Jeanne's remuneration is not more than fifteen 
or eighteen francs a month. True Jeanne receives many 
francs from the ladies and gentlemen whose chambers she 
arranges, but does it compensate for the weary limbs and 
aching head when the clock tolls eleven at night? And 
even then Jeanne is still slowly dragging tin pails of water 
upstairs. As I listened to the poor girl's stor}^, and marked 
her amiable nature and inborn courtesy, my heart swelled 
in sympathy. Thinking of her sorrowful lot my memory 
took a flying trip to my transatlantic home, where my maid 
has the insupportable responsibility of one bed-chamber 
resting upon her each day, and other housework of a light 
character, with nameless piivileges, and three dollars per 
week ; yet she frequently displays the cloven foot at the 
weight of her burden. As these contrasting pictures 
l)assed before my vision, I exclaimed, " You have too much 
work for one pair of hands. It is far worse than the 
drudgery of a slave. You should appeal to your employer 
for an assistant." It was the first time I had ever sown 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 149 

the seeds of insurrection in any household ; now I could 
not restmin my impulse to protect this girl from such un- 
just and cruel exactions. I felt the germ I had planted, 
though you may call it seditious, might produce valuable 
fruit for Jeanne. Sometimes Etienne, who is the frotteur 
and husband of the pretty and beneficent concierge at the 
front loge^ assists Jeanne spread the linen over the beds if 
he is in the same hall or chamber polishing the floor. We 
have no carpets under our feet. The boards are waxed 
until one may behold his reflected visage upon them, and 
the centre is adorned by large rugs, and t\\Q frotteur »^ with 
his stiff brush strapped upon the sole of his foot, is always 
busy scudding over the chambers and corridors. 

I like tlie proverbial politeness of the French. Call it 
superficial, if you choose; even if shallow it is ver^' fasci- 
nating. Inquire a direction of a passer upon the streets, 
and be it man, woman, or child, discovering you are a 
stranger, will accompany you two or three squares out of 
his or her way to set you upon the right path, chattering 
to you all the while, never conceiving for a moment that 
most of what is said may be utterly unintelligil)le. For- 
tuuatel}^ I succeed in making myself understood by the 
natives, but when they orate in their rapid and pauseless 
jargon, 1 subside in utter amazement. 

During the three months I resided in London, six weeks 
of which time my friends despaired of my lil'e, not one of 
the attendants at the hotel offered me the sliglitest voluntary 
civility. The second day after my arrival here, Jeanne came 
to my room with a card of a friend, while I was dressing, 
and noting my unfinished toilet, she asked to be allowed to 
hook my dress, or button my boots. Perhaps you are say- 
ing, slie expected a franc for her kindness; did not her 
complaisance deserve it ? Another instance of the urbanity 
of this nation took place at the milliner's this morning. 
Do not sneer 1 Did you ever hear of a lady coming to 
Paris and omitting her first dut}-, to buy a French bon- 
net? I did not wish to violate the custom of my sex; 
1 had no desire to visit the Exi)osition until it had readied 
a more finished state, so I passed the forenoon in millinery, 
book, and photograph shops, gratifying my personal de- 
isires. An establishment in the Faubouro; St. Honore 
had been highly recommended, and to examine the stock 
of this magazine I repaired thither. As I strolled toward 
the Faubourg, again I was impressed by the sobriety of 
the populace and the absence of beggars. What a vivid 



150 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

contrast the picture forms to the great English metropolis, 
where ebriety and mendicity are written by a sharp stylus 
upon at least one half the faces we meet 1 An equally ap- 
parent fact is the extreme neatness of the French women ; 
however meagre the dress, it is alwa^'s neatly worn, and 
the hair, if not elaborate, ever tastefully arranged; not so 
the females on the other side of the Channel. 

On my way I passed many noble homes, where the great 
wooden gates close out the eyes of the rude, inquisitive 
world from the flowering paradise of the courtyard, of 
which I caught an occasional glimpse as a servant would 
pass, or a marquise enter her carriage. At length I reached 
a stately building, bearing the number I sought; directed 
to the fourth story by the concierge^ I ascended and found 
myself in regal apartments, sparkling in gilt-, frescoes, 
miiTors, and laces. An infinity of confections were upon 
exhibition, and though their construction justified the 
prices, they exceeded what I was able to pay. No bonnet 
for less than twelve dollars, and many for twenty-five, 
and I should have turned away had it not been for the 
courtesy of the accomplished salesladies. I may apply 
the word ""ladies" in its every acceptation; in manner, in 
appearance, and in education. Both handsome, the younger 
past 3'()uth, the elder had crossed the meridian of life, and 
yet either would have "shaken tlie saintship of an anchor- 
ite" by their subtle grace, and liquid voice and talking 
eyes; and so they succeeded in selling me a bonnet. How 
could I resist the influence of two such seductive flatterers 
and liars? They compelled me to be seated before a mirror, 
and one bonnet after another adorned my pate; for "she 
was quite sure she could suit madame. If one was too 
costly there was another, hanging upon the next peg, just 
as beautiful, for eighteen francs less. W madame did not 
like the rouge., madame should see herself in the ciel-bleu; 
it was just madanie's color, but then madame was so easily 
coiffed ; madame was — ah! «t tres belle in anything;" and 
then these two handsome, craft}' females indulged in a dis- 
sertation in their own tongue, largely interlarded with 
English, upon my constructive attractions. This last coup 
dfetat clinched the bargain. The next " madame" who 
purchased a more expensive article would be still m(jre 
beautiful, and would undoubtedly hear her charms extolled 
in still more winning tones. Still I admire the shrewd 
l)hilosophy of these people; it made us all happy; they 
sold their merchandise; I went away in a state of beati- 
tude, in being compared to flowers, and angels, and sun- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 151 

beams, the calmness of moonlight, and the sparkle of 
champagne, which would not have been the case had dis- 
obliging attendants shown an indisposition to display 
goods, saying, "Madame, we have nothing that would be- 
come you." And as I passed away towards the bookshop, 
m}^ meditations were upon the cruel fascinations of these 
French women. With me their influence had been poten- 
tial ; what would such sway be with the opposite sex? I 
could find little censure for one who yielded to the spell, 
whether exercised for good or evil. 

The literature of the gay city is a marvel. It abounds 
in such a variety, that even a woman with an infirmity for 
dress and ornamentation, is startled at the mass of engrav- 
ing and printing for sale and show. Here, at least, you 
have what is not to be found in London. There the literary 
depots are in the railway stations; here books, papers, and 
periodicals fill tiie windows and kiosks on the Boulevards 
in all languages and for every nation. At Madame Michel's, 
on the 2:)ave of the Grand Hotel, I find French, Italian, 
German, Dutch, and even Greek, Turkisli, and Chinese 
literature People of all these nationalities flock here to 
bu}" and read the periodicals in their vernacular. Of course 
the French predominates. In comic journalism and carica- 
tures the French excel. We had nn example of them as 
printers and sculptors at our Centennial Exhibition. But 
now I pause briefly u[)on tlie French gift of printed satire. 
Everybody is ridiculed; no one is sacred or saved from the 
merciless wit and scathing lampoon of their savage jokes. 
With a dash of the pencil they transform the most serious 
statesman into a clown. Mademoiselle Sara Bernhardt's 
willowy figure is turned into a trail of smoke; the fighting 
Cassagnac converted into a huge pistol; Victor Hugo, a 
dying lion, gazing upon the setting sun; Marshal Mac- 
Mahon, scowling in a gigantic moustache; Gambetta, in 
kingly robes; Pope Leo XIII, in every conceit of honor- 
able disguise ; John Bull, in as many shapes as his peculiar 
habits may suggest; Brother Jonathan, in all descriptions 
of stars and stripes; and the world's catalogue of politi- 
cians, soldiers, actors, i)riests, and celebrities of all voca- 
tions. And as I overhauled the photographs of living and 
dead heroes in the shops on the Rue de Rivoli, my ardent 
desire was to make a collection. I looked, and looked, 
and was dazed by the endless profusion of famous faces in 
various guises; but I turned away with saddened purpose 
as 1 remembered my limited spaces, and finances, and re- 
flected upon how much farther my journey was to extend. 



152 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER XXXIII. 

" Of the hearts that daily break, 
Of the tears that hourly fall, 
Of the many, many troubles of life, 

That grieve this earthly ball — 
Disease and Hunger, Pain and Want, 
But now I dream of them all !" 

HCOD. 

Pahis, May, 1S78. 

However paradoxical it may seem, the Exposition Uni- 
verselle is the remotest matrnet to the stranger in Paris. 
The gay city is itself an endless and unfading microcosmic 
dis])lay. Of exhibitions we have iiad a satiety; at least, 
until a warrantable interval has elapsed, when we may 
again show our demonstrations in art, science, and litera- 
ture, from the lofty pedestal of Proo^ress, and when our 
national and social development has reached a iiigher state 
of civilization. We liad an exhibition at Philadelphia, of 
"which this one is, with all its splendor, a feeble lethargic 
transcri|>6; and we can have exliil)itions in every city and 
town of the two hemispheres which will only be the copies 
of a great archetype. But Paris — national, political, pecu- 
liar, and omnium gafhe7'um Paris — stands alone, and can 
only be enjoyed here; and here there is sucii inexhaustible 
enjoyment that the ''appetite seems to grow with what it 
feeds upon." 

The exhibition palaces are still disordered and in disha- 
bille^ while Paris is ever in gala attire. She is alternately 
the rainbow, the storm, the sunshine, the starlight, and the 
cyclone, an(i in each of these phenomenal phases is entran- 
cingiy unsurpassed. 

J have endeavored in vain to retrospect through the 
vista of centuries, the ravages of pestilence and famine, 
the smoke of artillery, tlie bloody sloughs of battle, the 
flames of communes, and the devastation of revolutions, 
and on the banks of the Seine, recall the mud huts of tlie 
Parisii, where now stand the noble monuments which per- 
petuate the memory of crime, commune, and conquest. 

Oh ! ancient Lutetia, thy primitive mantle dropped be- 
fore Caesar's sword, and was trampled into dust by his 
A'anquishing hordes; purged and })urified by successive 
despoilers wert thou, until now, not even an aroma of thy 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 153 

gypsy, pastoral lineage remains to mar the luscious luxu- 
riant flower of thy glorious womanhood. 

But who, gazing upon this white-robed Napeae^ can for- 
get the other and darker side of her life? I mean the life 
portrayed by Victor Hugo and Eugene Sue, of the drudg- 
ing, struggling, sinning Faubourg St. Antoine, that hot- 
bed of indigent insurgents; and upon the Rive Gauche, 
the Quartier Latin, the home of their reckless student 
allies? Not so direful, it is true, as when Eugene Sue 
presented his vividly wrought picture to Louis Philippe, 
through the medium of his Mysteres de Paris. The in- 
auguration of the present regime has done much toward 
ameliorating the morals of these arrondissements, as I soon 
perceived while penetrating the forbidden precincts. 

Passing the brilliant shops and hotels of the Rue de 
Rivoli, the equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, and the 
fountains into the Rue St. Antoine, which is still broad 
and brilliant, but from which issue numerous contracted 
by-ways and alleys, dark and damp, lined by cloud-piercing 
tenant-houses, grim and grimy, whose outer walls seem 
sustained by huge boulders against which the wheels of 
our voiture o^rind as we ride throuo-h the narrow streets. 
Coarse, toiling, hunted, bloated men are tilted all along the 
margin of the houses, in ragged blue blouses, and stunted 
clay-pipes between their tobacco-stained lips. Dirty, half- 
naked children wallow at their feet and under the chairs, 
seeming to cradle pollution and malaria in th|p folds of 
their scanty garments. A large lamp projects over the 
court entrance, and sheds a melancholy glow over the in- 
mates. Some of the women are drawing water in their 
large tin pails, while others are drowsing under the effects 
of anisette or absinthe. From the upper windows, fifth, 
sixth, and seventh stories, are glimmering rays that dis- 
play the toiling forms and anxious, famished faces of 
laboring females, some bending over lace frames, some 
working over tiny forges, welding gold and silver wir^es; 
while other hands are soiled in the paint and glue of arti- 
ficial floral construction. The windows have long been 
strangers to water or brush, and cobwebs festoon the ceil- 
ings, but along the sills are boxes of flowers drooping for 
want of sun and pure air, and over the walls and blinds 
bean vines are wreathing their tendrils; a little feathered 
prisoner or a kitten is seen, perched in many of these lan- 
guishing arbors. A steam of strong, young spring onions 



154 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

emanates in regular puffs from the inner stories and per- 
meates the atmosphere. The front shops of these houses 
are alive with the trade of energetic snd successful jnar- 
chands; a cobbler, a tinsmith, a blanch isaeu^e, or a res- 
taurant, where the menu consists of leeks, radishes, bouil- 
lon^ and bouilli^ wine, and liqueurs. These people are 
arduously struggling to make an honest, respectable liv- 
ing, so they may clothe and educate their children, and 
lift them out of the slough of contamination. But will the 
fruition of their humble, praisewortliy aspirations be real- 
ized? They are young now; hope and ambition are lusty 
within them. The human buds are bursting in fast suc- 
cession, but the soil is setoned with virus; the husbandman 
may choose the sunniest, most sanitary spot in the entire 
garden, but will not contagion be convened, even upon 
angels' wings, in the breath of heaven, and the limpid cur- 
rent of virtue, turned to irrigate and nurture the nascent 
plant, will gather the virulence of the sea through which 
it flows! 

Yice is quick and virtue is slow to become root-bound in 
the embryo procreated and nursed in an atmosphere of 
corruption. The lessons taught by example exert a more 
potent and permanent authority than theoretical ones, and 
here the evil example is ever paramount. 

Often there is seen a young woman carrying a bundle, — 
perhaps a faded silk skirt, — an old woman with a pillow or 
iDolster, or a man with a dingy mirror issuing from the 
courtyard; they do not stop to ciiat with their neighbors 
upon the corners, but cast stealthy glances right and left 
and hurry on. You wonder where they are going ; their 
manner whispers that they are upon some secret errand 
bent. They all turn toward the northwest ; you need not 
follow ; they are all tracing the one path, to the Mont-de- 
Piete, in the Rue de Paradis du Temple. It is a curious 
establishment, but is nothing more nor less than a vast 
government pawnbroking office, whose profits are devoted 
to the support of charitable institutions. It seems an in- 
congruous project. 

A few steps farther is the Marche du Temple, where 
hundreds of this same population are congregated to over- 
haul and perhaps eventually purchase some of the sordid, 
soiled, trumpery of this wonderful rag-fair. They are truly 
the ''vestments that Time filches away." Here, in one in- 
compatible mass, are the cast off 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 155 

— " Purple, princely gown, 
Of liig'li success ; or ease, like robes of down ; 
Or harsh denials, like the camel's hair 
The Prophei wore ; or sable weeds of grief; 
Or smooth white burial robes of last relief" 

And here the vocabulary most larg^ely patronized bears 
a similitude to the ribaldry and vituperation of London's 
Billingsgate. Such a vicinity, of course, is impregnated 
by thieves, grog-shops, dance-houses, gambling houses, yet 
when I passed through it was withal orderly in tiie ex- 
treme. 

From the Faubourg St. Antoine, across the Pont d'Aus- 
terlitz, along tlie promenade of the Seine, I entered the 
Faubourg St. Germain, where there exists another popula- 
tion than the Ultramontanists and Bourbons, which is 
much oftener seen thronging the streets, and filling the 
highways with shout and revelry. On the Rue Dauphine 
and tlie Rue du Bac, there still reside tlie offspring of the 
companions of Mudames de Stael and Recamier, it is true; 
but come into the retreats of the students and grisette of 
this Quartier Latin, where the aristocratic, conservative 
incense has evaporated though decorum is preserved, and 
you will at once observe its resemblance to the district we 
have just quitted on tlie right of. the river. There is not 
so much sorrowful, starving poverty visible here ; the by- 
streets are dark and the houses tall and dingy, but the 
students of art and medicine are full of animation and 
jollity, swaggering along, linked in each other's arms ; or 
stopping to take a glass of wine at the adjacent cabaret, 
where the account is onl}^ scored off" once a month, when 
the stipulated allowance arrives from the doting parents 
in the far-away provinces; or going toward tlie Odeon or 
one of the cafe gardens, apparently happy hy the side of 
his favorite grisette. 

The conceit I had formed of this class of females was a 
vain delusion. I had expected to see youthful, natty, 
sparkling coquettes, whose vocation it was to wink and 
blink, and waft a salute to every man wiiom fortune threw 
across their path ; I found neat, modest, confirmed, indus- 
trious women, not at all calculated to sway a man by their 
ravishing beauty nor subtlety, but created and trained for 
good housewives and vigilant mothers. 

The pictures of this section of the city were weird and 
bizarre, but not disagreeable. If the undeveloped artist or 
erabiyo doctor was poor, and compelled to lead a studious 



156 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

life, and to sleep np many pairs of stairs in a stnffj- back 
chamber, they seemed to accept the inevitable philosophi- 
cally, and embrace the pleasant opportunities of their lives 
wiih hungry zeal. 

The grisettes were tranquil and content. 

The foliage in the garden of the Luxembourg seems 
forced in its luxuriance for this early season ; the lights 
flash from the summer theatres, and the orchestras fill the 
air with melody. 

In a little gloomy shop two women were picking rags; 
they were handsome creatures, with full white throats, 
from which their dresses were turned back, and crimson 
kerchiefs were knotted over their bosoms ; my gaze and 
attention were arrested by these superb animals, with the 
dark luminous eyes and wealth of sable hair, set in the 
engulfing frame of filthy refuse; and as I lingered one 
flung her lusty, polished arms about the other's neck, and 
caressed her with a lover's ardent rapture, until the cheer- 
less hole glowed with the fire of passion and youth. To 
my eyes it was no longer the dismal home of the chiffon- 
7}iere, but a heaven — or hell, God knows which ? — of deliri- 
ous ecstasy. 

It was Saturda}-- night when I passed throngh these 
scenes, and this community seemed resting in their orgies 
to stimulate them for the morrow. Yes! Sunday is the 
grand gala day here; it is the day of frolic and fun, excur- 
sions into the suburbs and wild sports in the city. 

As I fell asleep alter this experience, it was with these 
reflections: what I saw had instructed me; it taught me 
the lesson of strife and sin ; but 1 was eager for further 
erudition in this stratum of society. Intuition warned me 
that there was much to be yet unfolded. But how to 
reach these fantastic marvels of Parisian life was the agi- 
tating disquisition! My desire grew into a passion, and 
as I pondered I became wroth with an imnginary tyrant 
who was thwarting my foolish whim. Soon, very soon, 
my sad fancy was about to be gratified, to my intense 
satisfaction and disgust. 

The next evening, Sunday, a company of six set out to 
visit the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We dismissed cocher^ 
and applied for admittance at the great entrance of the 
western fa9ade ; here we received no answer, and loath to 
abandon our project, we api)lied at many other entrances 
of the eglise on the isle of Seine without success. We 
leaned over the parapet of Pont Notre Dame ; in the calm. 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 15t 

even flow of the beautiful river was reflected the star- 
spangled canopy above, intensely blue at the zenith, and 
fading gradually into a pale turquoise in the far west. 
Upon the massive stone bridges flickered rows of yellow 
lights, finding their duplicates in the current below ; under 
their dark" arches glided the boats with green and crimson 
lanterns, casting fore and aft long trails of phosphorescent 
light upon the gently rocking ripples; the broad stone 
steps of the quay were clean and smooth by the constant 
lapping of the tame, sweet waves. Oh! why do not hun- 
dreds of those wasting, languishing creatures, who are 
pricking out their eyes with the lace needles, or eking out 
a miserable existence in a garret hovel, come here on such 
a night, and "sustained and soothed, wrap the drapery of 
their couch about them," and let the caressing billows 
drift their spirits into the "slow and silent stream, Lethe!" 

The fiacres^ with their poor skin-and-bones horses stood 
along the river-banks ; the care-free students and gay com- 
panions were coming from their day's outing at Vincennes, 
Yersailles, St. Denis, Neuilly, Sevres, or St. Cloud, to ter- 
minate their spree at a jardin. The proprietor of one of 
the skin-and-bone equipages stepped up to us, and queried : 
Bullier? I know I looked horrified. At first I thought 
he was talking about soup or cold boiled meat ; but the 
word contained fascination for me as I discovered that 
this mercantile driver wished to take us to the great ball- 
room of the Quartier Latin. Of course the gentlemen 
answered and emphasized "?ion," the ladies appeared 
shocked, but still cocher lingered, as I questioned an Ame- 
rican resident in Paris regarding this enticing Bullier. 
Then I thought it must be the sight of which I had been 
deprived the preceding evening, and, at length, we con- 
cluded to look at this show, as we would at any horrible 
curiosity ; so cocher won his suit. 

In a wide rather handsome street there was a blaze of 
gas-jets, a crowd of gamins, youths, and heedless girls, and 
an orchestra in full blast; this was the Jardin Bullier. We 
obtained our tickets, two francs each, at the bureau, and 
descended a long flight of steps to an immense floor where 
the band played, and hundreds of animals, with human 
souls, were mingling in the mazes of the dance. There 
was no botanical beauty in the garden, which seemed to 
extend in a complete circle around the hem of the salon. 

It was a narrow, gravel path skirted by withering pines 
in tubs ; here and there a grotto closed in by shrubbery, or 
14 



158 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

a sheltered arbor. But the audience did not care for quiet, 
sequesteied reti'eats ; they preferred to bask in the full 
glare of the gaslight, and bacchanalian revel. Slovenly 
waiters were hurrying by with little carafTes of cognac. 
All was wild and incoherent, but no one in a state of brutish 
intoxication. 

For a few moments we listened and looked at the fan- 
tastic scene around us. What we saw and what we heard 
I will not translate, foi* 

"Into strange Vagaries fell, 
As they would dance." 

Every feature of this human menagerie was nauseating 
in the last degree. Low, imbecile men; miserable, dirty 
women, marked by the finger of disease and wretcliedness. 
There were no laces, nor paint, nor silk, nor jewels, or the 
stimulus of champagne to hide the tarnished souls, the 
tattered reputation, and the decaying bodies of these poor 
children. But they danced,- — danced wildly, as if impelled 
by a demoniac power, hot caring what, or when, or how, 
and I covered my ej^es involuntarily and hurried away 
with more anxiety than I had shown importunity to come. 



LETTERXXXIV. 

" When loveij'' woman stoops to folly, 
And finds too late that men betray, 
What charm can soothe her melancholy, 
What art can wash her guilt away ?" 

Oliver Goldsmith. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

When last I opened my diary it was to chronicle the 
horrors of the vast human menagerie of the Quartier Latin, 
where I had seen the animals in the heiofht of their satur- 
nalian sports on the Sabbath. I never had a prepossession 
for a circus, a hippodrome, nor any of the curiosities or 
monstrosities contained in collections of wild beasts, such 
as educated hogs, — or uneducated^ — armless girls, double- 
headed babies, brainless men, or heartless women. No I I 
will not malign so grosslj^ my sex by applying the epithet 
to the mongrel creatures who filled the Jardin Bullier. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 159 

My experience in this bizarre species had been limited 
until then, and though I do not regret the trial, as I favor 
tlie study of animate and inert nature in all its phases, 
one experiment contented me, and I shall penetrate no 
deeper into the revolting subject. 

Again it is Sunday night, and I come to speak of the 
beauties of the marvellous market of humanity, the Jardin 
Mahille. 

Hush ! a lady friend is appalled becaqse I suggest that 
we should tread these forbidden paths. But why not? [ 
query ; had we not the day preceding visited Les Halles 
Cetitr^ales^ and inhaled the incense of tl^e flower bazaar of 
the Madelaine ? Why shadow in obscurity the fact that 
we enjoyed and studied this greatest, choicest, and most 
bewitching, 3'^es, beautiful, most beautiful of all, — the 
market of human souls: the retreat of the i^ymph and the 
haunt of the sibyl ? 

Just off the Champs Elysees in the Avenue Montaigne 
is this emporium of fashionable vice. Nature and art have 
labored hand in hand and heart to heart to transform the 
nursery into a paradise, and invention seeiijs to have been 
exhausted in the construction of grottos, groves, arbors, 
sequestered walks, and secret recesses. Tjie ravines and 
cascades, gay parterres and gentle slopes, make an elysium. 
Five francs each we paid to enter this beaven of flowers, 
flounces, and furbelows. We arrived early, rather too 
earh^, for though the angels had trimmed and lighted 
their lamps, and nature's musicians were filling every 
nook and wave of air with sweet melody, the candelabras 
bordering the cafe and the garlands of Chinese lanterns fes- 
tooned from branch to branch of the tt'ees, were only dimly 
burning, and the orchestra was silent in the pavilion. 

Our advantage lay in this fact ; we had ample time to 
loiter through the avenues and linger upon the delicious 
features of the garden, while the fair votaries of fashion and 
pleasure were still employed donning the ravishing toilet 
designed to make the wearer's fortune, while annihilating 
that of some other ill-starred sister. The cafe is quite as 
larore and much resembling; Proskaur's in our Pairmount 
Park. In the centre of the garden is a highly decorated 
semicircular building for the accommodation of the bajid, 
and about this nucleus cluster females whose loftiest aspi- 
ration is to relieve a gentleman spectator of his hat by an 
intricate flourish of the left toe, while executing the vaga- 
ries of the can-can. 



160 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

We found a comfortable seat in a rustic alcove, near the 
main entrance path, where I could observe all who entered, 
and very much entertained was I bj^ the devices practised 
by the frail beauties upon their equally faithless prey. 
Occasionally a veritable old Darby and Joan couple from 
one of the near provinces would pass through the glitter- 
ing throng in a state of bewildered admiration at all they 
heard and saw, without having the slightest conception of 
its meaning. It was better so ; you know the old adage, 
"Where ignorance, etc." Had these good, unsophisticated 
people suspected the perversion of the banquet, at which 
they were willing guests, they would have denied them- 
selves tlie otherwise enchanting treat. Oftentimes a coun- 
try bumpkin, in loose shoes, short trowsers, hands thrust 
into the very extremities of his pockets, and mouth and 
e^^es wide open, would stand in a stony attitude, gazing 
and marvelling at the splendor of these creatures, whose 
images God had formed after his own, and whose souls 
had been supplied by Satan witli the covenant they should 
return to him after the casket had fallen into decay. There 
were many sightseers from strange lands like ourselves, 
and as the brilliant butterflies floated and swarmed amongst 
the flowers, the lights burned brighter, and the tuning of 
instruments told the advent of the dance. 

The tide of strollers stopped, and by the laughs, and 
applause, and the shouts of the revellers I knew that fun 
and frolic were running riot. But I was loath to leave 
my little retreat, though anxious to witness the dance, yet 
dreaded lest the exhibition might resemble the sad per- 
formance a week ago. 

When I did finally move towards the citadel of delight, 
the array of fashion, elegance, extravagance, and beauty 
that dazzled my eyes was such as 1 had never dreamed, 
even in the wildest flights of fancy. The scene was, even 
to my woman^s eye^ more exquisite than any of the great 
picture galleries I had walked, though not quite so endur- 
ing, and the fragrance exhaled by the female flowers was 
equally sweet if not so pure as the bouquets of the market 
of the Madelaine. 

To see that most bewildering of all dances, the can-can^ 
exjBcuted by Parisians, in Paris, and at the most aristo- 
cratic garden of its class in the world, would indeed be a 
fantastic sight for an American lady, and there were many 
there besides me. To procure a position close to the actors 
in ihe farce was now almost impossible, as the majority of 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 101 

the pleasure-seekers were clustered about them in a series 
of circles ; so I contented m3'seir in the background until 
some one satiated by the excess of passionless and garish 
sensuality consigned me a place ; and what a spectacle riv- 
eted my gaze ! 

Beside me stood a night-blooming Cereus, excessively 
handsome and aromatic, in lemon colored satin and gar- 
niture of bronze leaves, all of which inevitably fade into 
nothingness as the daylight approaches. 

Before me was another, a sweet moss-rose, in pale-pink 
silk, a cream-colored mantle embroidered, and a profusion 
of flaxen golden hair, appearing so gentle and modest, 
before some rude hand had torn away from her fair face 
its hood of soft green innocence; the beauty of the full- 
blown flower had not been marred by unmerciful brutality 
to the bud, but in the eye there lingered the pensive, 
pathetic lustre of heaven's own dew. To this sweet plant 
my heart yearned. I felt that she was no vulgar creation 
like the devil-may-care hundreds, not only a female, but a 
icoman^ young and beautiful now, struggling under a weight 
of sin and wrong, but sure eventually to Gil a penitent's 
grave. 

Behind me reposed a glorious damask rose, framed in 
black satin, and a bhi^je of diamonds upon her ample neck 
and arms, as hollow and heartless as a great l)ladder in- 
vented to float npon the foam of this most perilous sea. 

The music ceased, and the audience dispersed, so I 
secured my place at the revel. None of the elaborately 
attired beauties participated ; the dancers were without 
exception of the lower, poorer type, and the men — well! 
I need not discuss the male element; he who consents to 
such an exhibition of himself is unworthy mention. 

As much has been vvritten about the Mabille Gardens 
and against them, as in regard to any other of the myriad 
sins of the age; and yet the abused resort is always full 
during its season. You are told that it is not what it 
was; that it has fallen off; that the world has gotten so 
much purer; and that people go to these glittering devil- 
tries no more. All I have to say is that such is not my 
experience. An American resident in Paris spoke of the 
large sums expended ever}'- year to add to its attractions, 
and, judging by what I saw aiid heard, the money laid 
out, and the profits received, show that the business rewards 
the heaviest and most costly investment. It is not for 
me to draw the moral. I presume that nobody will uphold 

14* 



162 PICTURES A*ND PORTRAITS 

this meretricious place, and that even its acolytes will not 
dare to defend the example. But what puzzles me is that 
many persons who in Philadelphia and New York would 
run away from places no better, and play prude and pre- 
cisian if even asked to look in at a German theatre, or 
concert garden, or a bright saturnalia like Gilmore's in New 
York, come over to Paris and boldly pay five francs for a 
sight at the demi-monde^ who flutter their stained lives in 
the doubtful penetralia, and walk the glittering declines 
that lead down to inevitable Hades. And these Ameri- 
can Josephs and Clarissas rarely go alone. They come 
in crowds. Sometimes the ladies veil their porcelain faces ; 
sometimes the men hide their pious brows; but most fre- 
quently they gather in numbers, and when they return 
home they fold their hands in their laps, and raise the 
whites of tiieir eyes to heaven, and propitiate offended 
virtue hy saying; "It is an awful place, that Jardin 
Ilabille, and very naughty ; but we went, like the rest of 
the world, just to see it for once, so not to have it said 
that we were afraid to follow the example of othei's." 



LETTER XXXY, 

" He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one ; 
Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading ; 
Lofty, and sour, to them that loved him not. 
But to those men who sought him, sweet as summer." 

Shakespeare. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

A VERY warm and almost American summer day decided 
me to make several calls, and return several visits, and as 
Sunday shines no Sabbath in the French capital, 1 did not 
hesitate to use the first morning in the week to pay my 
respects to an American family, whose home is on the 
beautiful and broad avenue Josephine. They had adopted 
the sensible plan, apd occupied the floor above the entresol^ 
and as they had plenty of money and plenty of opportuni- 
ties, they were enjoying Paris to the full. As we drew the 
bell-handle towards us the great doors of the court flew 
back, and the concierge appeared at her little window. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 163 

From her we obtained the direction of onr friend's apart- 
ments, and passed up a spacious stairway of polished oak 
and walnut. We were admitted to the antechamber by a 
gentleman of sable hue, imported from "the States" as 
special valet de chambre. The room was rather small and 
square, containing only several carved-walnut chairs and a 
table, but the floor gave evidence of the assiduous toil of 
the frotteur. Here we left parasols, canes, hats, or any 
other awkward appurtenances by which we might be encum- 
bered, before entering the grand salle. Our auspicious 
brother of the Fifteenth Amendment ushered us into a 
salon^ garish in its elaborate decorations in repouse of gilt 
and white and gaud3'^ frescoes. Very few works of art 
adorned the walls, except those painted in the panels by 
the deft skill of the artist. The floor was covered by an 
expensive Axminster; filmy laces and crimson satin draped 
the deep embrasures of the casement-windows; and even 
the door-frames were of ornate wooden fretwork tinted by 
delicate pigments and dazzling in gold leaf. 1 do not 
wonder that the richest come here, like Mr. and Mrs. 
Mackay, and other bonanza kings, to revel in these Old 
World glories and to squander their easily earned millions, 
and I am sure you will forgive me when I say, had I been 
equally fortunate, I would have followed their example at 
least for awhile. There is one trouble that would not 
befall me. No glare and no novelty would ever alienate 
my heart from my country. It is too true that many 
Americans who come to Paris on a short visit soon g-row 
so much fascinated with this luxurious capital, and there- 
fore out of heart with their own ways at home, as to be- 
come regular habitues; and this applies not only to the 
very rich but to those who have very little money of their 
own. There are countrywomen of mine to-day in this 
costly citjT^, women of irreproachable reputations withal, 
who resort to every sort of expedient, and even at times 
submit to privations simply that they may live a Bohe- 
mian's life among these agreeable strangers. 

Although the day was warm, the avenues were already 
crowded with carriages dashing out to the Bois, and the 
magnificent boulevards, jocund with the wild and varied 
life of the bright metropolis; and I could well understand 
the witty remark of the superficial Frenchman when he 
said "that the opulent barbarians had again taken posses- 
sion of his luxurious Paris." The occupants of the glit- 
tering chariots and shining cafes and decorated highways 



164 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

were the foreigners, from all lands, flockintr hitherward to 
enjoy the Exhibition Universelle; so threading our way 
through the cheerful and shouting throng, we told cocher 
to drive us to the College de France, just at the rear of the 
theological and classical school founded by Robert Sor- 
bonne. Ever3' American calls to see Professor Laboulaye, 
now the cliief of that great academy, and a Senator for life 
in the French Assembly. He lives in the noble institution, 
which was founded in 1530 by Francis I, containing twenty- 
nine ciiairs, and distinguished for its lectures in historj'-, 
law, and languages, M, Lal»oulaye himself delighting crowds 
every Monday, when the Senate is not in session, with ex- 
quisite dissertations on such interesting subjects as Wash- 
ington, the American Constitution, Socrates, Julius Caesar, 
etc, M. Laboulaye lives in the simplicity of a cultivated 
student and scholar, and the {)lainness of his furniture, the 
learned confusion of his books, his soft voice and gentle 
manner, all a marked contrast to the fresh decoration and 
rather boisterous welcome of my American friends, was 
very like the austere and quiet rooms of the other great 
man I had visited in London, Dean Stanley, in Westmin- 
ster Abbe3% And when M. Laboulaye said to me, in his 
sweet broken English, "You Americans are so rich," I re- 
ceived it as a re|)roach of man^'' of my ostentatious country- 
women, M. Laboulaye, though, as every one knows, a 
severe Republican, looked and was dressed like a priest; 
he possesse<l the rare charm of listening intently to all I 
said in reply to his graceful questions, Whether I had seen 
the Exhibition? Whether 1 liked Paris? How long I 
intended to remain? WJiere 1 lived in America? And 
whether we would do him the honor to come any Monday 
and hear him lecture? It was all just as nice as it could 
be, and when I lelt his presence I felt the influence of his 
pure character and honest example, precisely as if I be- 
longed to the French Republic myself, 

As we emerged fronj the College, the streets in that far 
off quartier were quite deserted, as quiet indeed as Phila- 
delphia on a sunny Sabbath afternoon; so failing a voituj'e 
we were rattled otf to the Jardin des Plantes, opposite the 
Pont d'Austerlitz. This is one of the favorite resorts of 
the populace, a combination of every description of natural 
specimens, quick and inert, and perhaps the finest botanical 
collection in the world. 1 do not desire to be disloyal to 
fashion or to science, but I confess I have never been able 
to join in the enthusiasm of those who rhapsodize over a 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL, 165 

wilderness of monkeys, or go into ecstasies over cages 
filled with lions, tigers, leopards, or regard a colossal ele- 
phant or awkward hippopotamus with special devotion. 
To me far more interesting than these curious and savajje 
creatures, were the thousands of French people gathered 
to rest themselves in these rural retreats, and permitted to 
enjoy animate and inanimate nature gratuitously b^^ favor 
of the French Government. 

Tell me not of the vice and vulgarity of the Paris million, 
and of the cruelty of its so-called common people when 
their wildest passions are let loose. Wherever I have seen 
them, in their homes, in the streets, at the Exhibition, in 
their churches, or in places of amusement, they have cap- 
tured me by their politeness and cJeanliness, by their kind- 
ness to old people, their love for their children, and their 
invariable temperance; all of which qualities are as dis- 
tinctively French as they are distinctly different from the 
working classes in London. 

Much of this contrast arises from the intuitive love of 
the French from infancy for flowers, pictures, music, dress, 
comedies, and all that is artistic and graceful. They will 
detect a false note in an orchestra or a singer, or point out 
an error in a statue, with a polite shrug, and I have often 
noticed that the commonest workingman evinces as much 
genuine delight in high art as the conceited empiric who 
saunters through the galleries of the Louvre or the Palais 
Luxembourg. 



166 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER XXXYI. 

"Mortality, behold and fear, 
What a change of flesh is liere ! 
Think how many royal bones 
Sleep within these heaps of stones! 
Here they lie, had realms and lands, 
Who now want strength to stir their hands, 
Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust 
They preach, ' In greatness is no trust.' 
Here's an acre sown indeed 
With the richest, royallest seed 
That the earth did e'er suck in 
Since the first man died for sin ; 
Here the bones of birth have cried, 
' Though gods they were, as men they died !' 
Here are sands, ignoble things, 
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings ; 
Here's a world of pomp and state 
Buried in dust, once dead by fate." 

Fkancis Beaumont. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

I LINGERED ill the Place de la Concorde on my way to 
the Hotel des Invalides this morning, and as the sun 
touched the spray of the fountains into radiant prisms and 
glorified the monolith of Luxor, 1 thought of the past. 
The nuptial pageant of Marie Antoinette, terminating in 
the sad catastro[)he of a panic-stricken multitude, followed ^ 
scarcely more than two decades after bj^ the humiliation 
and execution of this same beautiful but prodigal queen; 
the horrors of the Reign of Terror, and the severed heads 
of Charlotte Corday and Robespierre, trampled under the 
feet of the sans culottes; the demon populace saturating 
their kerchiefs in the blood of their guillotined king, and 
the women knitting while the}' participated in the barbaric 
carousal ; all these crowded into my mental vision almost 
as vividly as the Egyptian hieroglyphics on the tablets of 
the Obelisk. The statues of the eight important cities of 
France: Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen, 
Brest, Lille, and Strasbourg — the last, alas! French no 
longer — blazed like shining demigods this brilliant day. A\ 
To my right, at the top of the Rue Royal, in all its pathetic Jj 
majesty, were the dark peristyle and hovering angels of the f !j 
Madelaine, with its [)atron saint as the central figure of 
the tympanum, where the Last Judgment has been wrought 
in stony alto-relievo. She is in an attitude of intercession 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 167 

with Christ for the sonls of the condemnetl. Before me, 
through the leafy arbor of the Champs Elysdes, rose in 
perspective the Arc de Triomph, the nohle monument pro- 
jected by Napoleon as a cenotaph to the triumphs of the 
French, and only completed by Louis Philippe in time for 
the cortege bearing the corpse of him whose life's chapters 
may be read from its walls, to pass under its arches on the 
way to the resting-place prepared amongst the veterans 
he loved so well. 

Crossing the Pont de la Concorde, I turned towards 
this magnificent catafalque of the Corsican conqueror. The 
gilded dome was the first splendor that dazzled me as we 
came into the fair city, and this was my third attempt, ow- 
ing to a negligence of the hours of admission, to gain ad- 
mission to its magnificence. 

Napoleon Bonaparte seemed to permeate the very atmo- 
sphere of the Hotel des Invalides; all nature seemed to 
breathe his name in a hush of reverence. The approach to 
the glittering tomb is by streets hallowed by the names of 
Yauban and Varenne, and as you pass through the garden 
where the veterans are drowsing under branching shade- 
trees, or planting little plots of flowers, you forget that 
this haven was not prepared by the first Consul for his 
scarred and crippled warriors. There is not a thought for 
Louis XIV, who really founded the hospital for the infirm 
and aged fighting men of France; every sigh, and every 
thrill, are for the sorrows and triumphs of the incompara- 
ble emperor, general, and statesman. You may say his 
Sfid end was only a just retribution for his repudiation of 
the sweet woman who led him on to fame and empire ; but 
do you not think his dread expiation was continually at 
work upon him through the interminable line of corrnorants 
who fed and flourished on his power, and finally dras^ged 
him down ? I was first impressed by the hazy, golden 
light that veiled the high altar, and hung over the royal 
crypt in the chapel. It seemed like the holy incense around 
an ascending spirit. An intense stillness filled the church. 
Many foreign visitors, toiling men and bo3^s, who had lain 
down their instruments of labor for a few moments, and 
bourgeois women and children, stood about the throne of 
the military deity. The men uncovered their heads as 
they passed the portals of the sanctuary, the boys stepped 
lightly over the mosaic laurels that wreath the amaranthine 
tiles of his victories about his bed, a mournful glamcuir 
gatiiered in the eyes of the veteran soldier as he leaned 



168 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

over the urn of porphyry, and instinctive devotion fell 
upon the whole gazing and voiceless concourse. 

Down a broad stairway we passed to the entrance of the 
vault. Over the doors, supported by caryatides, I saw the 
last characteristic request of Napoleon, that his "ashes 
might repose upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of 
the people he loved so well." How precisely has his testa- 
ment been fulfilled! About him are garlanded his con- 
quests ; over him wave the banners of the conquered foe ; 
in transept and nave are the remains of general or brother; 
and guarding the tomb are the sepulchral urns of his loyal 
Marshals Duroc and Bertrand. There is a constant flow 
of worshippers about the sarcophagus. 

The memory of Louis Napoleon is as cold and dead in 
the republican capital as if his hands had never held the 
reins of government ; there is no regretful sigh for the fair 
Eugenie, whose beauty illumined the Tuileries, radiated 
the boulevards, and shone upon the Bois ; whose vaulting 
ambition hurried Maximilian to his final compt, and im- 
posed the crushing crown upon the brow of the beautiful 
Carlotta, that holds reason prisoner. The French have 
even forgotten that the blood of the sleeping hero trav- 
ersed the veins of the late emperor; all their tears are for 
the "Little Corporal." 

The mourners come from strange lands and the far-off 
French provinces to revere the great soldier. All around 
were signs of the Republic; all around were souvenirs of 
the new liberty, and, within view, the group of Exhibition 
Palaces designed and completed by the Republic. But 
still the French masses idolize the "lieutenant of artillery." 
Other dynasties have risen and faded out of sight; other 
heroes have had their little day and have been forgotten ; 
but the name and fame of Bonaparte are the unsetting 
stars in the empyrean of France. 

Our next visit was to the celebrated Parisian necropolis. 
From the Hotel des Invalides, in the extreme west portion, 
to the cemetery, on the eastern confines, was a ride of 
quite an hour, through the Boulevarde St. Germain, washed 
by the blood of the Bourbons, and past the Rue du Bac, 
for the gutter of which the diplomate in petticoats had 
sighed when in exile at Coppet, -surrounded by her vice- 
regal court. Then we crossed the Seine, and looked upon 
the ruined mass of the Hotel de Ville. I vainly sought 
the window at which our friend Lafayette presented Louis 
Philippe to the people nearly fifty years ago, and the room 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 169 

in which Louis XYI spoke almost a hundred years since, 
crowned with the cap of liberty, soon to be dragged to an 
ignominious death. In the Place de la Bastille there was 
a throng of ouvriers. Only the lofty Column of July 
marks the graves of the victims of the commune of 1830. 
No stone remains of the old prison to tell the story of tlie 
wretched creatures who languished in their living graves, 
only to be released for their execution ; but the quartier is 
still, apparently, populated by the same elements that de- 
vastated their glorious Paris by shot, and shell, and sword, 
and fire in 1789, 1793, 1830, 1848, and 1871. 

From this broad square, covering the ashes of six hun- 
dred and fifteen martyrs, we emerged into the most curious 
of all the fantastic sights in this sui generis city, the Rue 
de la Roquette, where the merchants of the costumes and 
tributes of the dead maintain their bizarre competition. 
This street leads directly from the northeastern limit of the 
Place de la Bastille to the world-renowned Pere La Chaise, 
It is flanked with ateliers or stuccatos of monumental 
statuar}^, immortelles, and funeral offerings. This ghostly 
trafl9c is peculiar, because so many shops, all selling fac- 
simile articles, should be grouped in one block without the 
alternation and variety found in a thousand other empori- 
ums in other sections, but when I had passed row after 
row of these stalls and still met not the slightest change 
in the character of the merchandise, I could not coax myself 
to believe that this was a business from which men derived 
remuneration, but a museum for the edification of visitors. 

But the Rue de la Roquette was no longer an object of 
speculation to me after entering the mighty home of the 
dead. It is one vast collection of mausolea and sarcophagi. 
There are very few graves, as in our places of burial, and 
in the chapels, and about the tombs, are strewn wreaths of 
natural flowers, paper-flowers, and muslin flowers; iin- 
mortelles composed of black and white beads strung 
upon wire and formed into every description of re- 
ligious and appropriate device, all of which are constantly 
renewed from the market in the streets outside. The 
photographs of entire families bearing loving inscriptions 
were placed as souvenirs upon the altars, and frequently a 
perpetual light glorified the narrow beds of clay. 

I pondered long before one of the countless sanctuaries 

in the central aisle — it was not the tomb of a celebrity, at 

least not one of those bright stars of fame whose lustre 

grows more luminous with added years — peering through 

15 



170 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

tlie iron door upon the mosaic altar, and silver candelabra, 
the marble floor and superb purple velvet altar cloth, the 
paintings, and vases, and manuals, all offerings upon the 
grave of the departed, evidently a dead Croesus. Some- 
times the bridal wreath, or communion garland, or the 
broken doll, or the war sword is laid by the side of its 
former owner. It was touchingly realistic and full of 
love for the dead. 

Opposite was the tomb of Rossini, of pure white stone, 
rather unostentatious in the interior. He died only a few 
3'ears since. In the first avenue, diverging from the riglit 
of the broad patli, is the tomb of the great Hebrew who 
thrilled two continents by her almost supernatural por- 
trayal of the dark passions of hatred and revenge, but 
possessed none of the gentleness that gives woman her 
greatest charm — Rachel. In the same section was the 
opulent sepulchre of the princes of Mammon, the golden 
Rothschilds. 

A few steps to the east is the classic cynosure of all the 
romantic, love-languishing Romeos and Juliets who visit 
this sweet place of repose — the cenotaph of Ahelard and 
Heloise. And here they stand, and weep, and sigh, and 
meditate. As I watched these double Niobes, I marvelled 
if they knew the correct version of the lives they mourned. 
The pair have been deified by generations. And to what 
end? Perhaps to incarnate the deceitful precepts of a false 
philosophy. Ahl it has ever been so. Magdalene is a 
saint; the thief who repented with his expiring breath, an 
angel; Abraham, who turned the wronged Hagar and her 
otts[)ring vagrants upon the world, a holy patriarch; Solo- 
mon, with his hundreds of concubines, the scriptural 
savant; Judith, the murderess of Holofernes, a heroine; 
Catharine, tlie Russian Faustina, a queen ; the incestuous 
Lucrezia Borgia, the theme of the troubadour; and the 
names of Robespierre, Nero, Henry YlII, Bloody Mary; 
flaming meteors upon the historical horizon! 

From there we fell into an avenue of graves, planted 
over with fresh, rank sward, shadowed b}' weeping willows, 
and marked only by a white or granite headstone. I liked 
the solemn, umbrous shadows, and the peaceful hush, and 
the soft, sighing rustle of the leaves, better than these daz- 
zling tombs and spectacular decorations. And as I saun- 
tered the otium and sweetness of the spot enveloped me 
like an incense. On my patli towards the chapel I inad- 
vertently stumbled upon the grave of Ledru Roilin, the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. Itl 

Republican leader of the last empire, who flew to England 
after failing in an attempt to prevent the Emperor from 
sending troops to aid in re-establishing the Pope. At the 
end of twenty years he returned to his native country, and 
though endeavoring to avoid politics was thrust into the 
arena, and by a greater constituency than ever was elected 
to the Assembly, where he took his seat upon the Extreme 
Left, and pleaded universal suffrage more impressively 
than formerly. His grave was laden with the offerings of 
his party, and bound in the tricolors of France. 

On th^ rio;ht of the church are the mound and monument 
of Casimir Perier. The display of monumental splendor 
was attractive, but there were no democratic offerings from 
the masses upon the clay that covered the peacemaker, like 
those cast at the feet of the revolutionist. In this locality 
are a group of dramatic and musical celebrities, as if seek- 
ing congenial companionship in the grave — Bellini, Gretry, 
Boeildieu, Cherubini, Chopin, and Talma. When I met 
the name of Constant 1 involuntarily looked for the next 
one to be De Stael, but, alas! I recollected how man^' roods 
separate these two in death who were so close in life. 
These lives are ever combined in my mind by the wealth of 
love and intellect with which this strong woman oppressed 
her ungrateful lover. She prompted his orations in the 
Assembly, and wound her arms about his neck until he was 
satiated by the excess of favor. Marshals Ney, Lefebvre, 
Massena, Devaust, and Mortier, with the old voluptuary 
Barras, form a magnificent array. In the extreme north of 
the cemetery I found Balzac, the naughty novelist, close to 
the limits of the fosse communes or public graves. 

There was a procession of Catholic girls clad in white, 
with long white veils falling over their faces and forms, 
and borne bj six of their companions was a little white 
coffin, while the others carried candles to light the little 
soul through the dark path to heaven. Two holy fathers, 
in sable gowns, carrying rosaries, and repeating the office 
of the dead, walked at their sides. It was only the 
burial of a poor little mortal, who had come to rest at last 
amongst the herd, still .how sweet and suggestive it was. 
Yet in the city so populated by the dead how few were the 
living persons. But the French are as loving to their dead 
as they are to the living, and odd enough, if the Commune 
kills its hecatombs, there is a splendid burial for all. 

Much as I had ever loved these cities of the dead at 
home, my foreign experience was still more affecting. I 



172 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

was loath to quit the sublime rest and beatitude found 
only here. I wandered amongst graves, and mausolea, and 
naked mounds; studied the history of great luminaries, 
"whose lustre had been eclipsed, alas! too soon; and though 
sad with the experience, filled with an ineffaceable memory. 
Pere La Chaise was converted into an extra-mural ceme- 
tery in 1804, and took its name from its former owner, the 
confessor of Louis XIV, and is of its kind without a peer 
in Europe, though we have manj^ as beautiful in America, 
yet none so entirely novel. It is a sanctuary for the quick 
and the dead, a phice of graves, but a source of contrast. 
We in our country do not follow our departed like those 
volatile and voluptuous Latins. They are often at the side 
of their loved ones gone, and man}' a tomb is a second 
home, many a vault an altar, many a shrine as familiar as 
a fireside. Here, as in all cemeteries, 3'ou gather the great 
philosophy of the emptiness of human ambition, and the sub- 
stantial value of love and literature. The soldier comes here 
tired of the blood and smoke of battle, too often forgotten by 
those he has served. The statesman finds in Pere La Chaise 
a panacea for his baffled ambition. As I thought of all 
these broken hopes and buried fortunes, these failures in 
love, in monej', in station, and in deeds of surprise and 
empire, I felt again that the happiest and the most endur- 
ing of lives, and the sweetest of deaths, came from the tried 
attachment of devoted friendship, and the enduring solace 
and holy solitude of books. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. US 



LETTER XXXYII. 

" Speak low ! tread softly through these lialls ; 
Here Genius lives enshrined ; 
Here reign, in silent majesty, 
The monarchs of the mind. 

A mighty spirit-host they come, 

From every age and clime ; 
Above the buried w^recks of years. 

They breast the tide of Time." 

Anna C. Lynch Rotta. 

Parts, May, 1878. 

Of tlie critics in America who essay to pass judgment 
npon art, how many possess tiie actual requisites for the 
task? One in the thousand has perhaps onl^' truly and 
conscientiously studied the rise and progress of painting 
in the great European art centres; yet the dissertations of 
the whole thousand upon the great theme are loud and 
pi'etentious. The}^ talk of tones of shade, gradation of 
colors, complementary hues, contrasts and combinations, 
of proi)erly selecting, blending, and balancing jDigments, 
with judicial gravity. Then they drift into discussions of 
form, and after a technical manipulation of figure the un- 
travelled and untauglit reader is forced to believe at the 
end of the preachment that each critic is a genuine ana- 
tomical and chromatic professor. But as we probe the 
examples we find the professor's vocabulary stereot3'ped 
and stinted. The same generic terms, with sligl.it modula- 
tion, are applicable in every theory, and with the acquisi- 
tion of these few scientific phrases the dogmatic connois- 
seur presumes to become an oracle of art. 

Because I have passed several mornings in the Musde 
du Louvre I shall not assume to classify or censure any 
of the several schools. It is a vast, bewildering panorama, 
where the masters of all the nations are grouped into one 
bouquet of infinite grandeur. I thought I could compre- 
hend it while enveloped in its transcendent glamour, but 
now, in the seclusion of ray boudoi?-^ the chaos of ideas 
warns me to study each picture again and again, before 
forming even an unspoken conception of its merits. 

Having followed the river fagade along the Quai du 
Louvre, and having the window pointed out from whicli 
Charles IX fired upon his own people (which I afterwards 

15* 



174 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

learned bad not been built until lon<r after the perfidious 
monarch's death!), we turned into the Rue de Ilivoli, where 
the great pile is equally imposing. Begun by F'rancis I 
after his return from Italy, burning with the fire of renais- 
sance^ it became the pretext for ro^al expenditure in many 
succeeding reigns, and now, after the addition of wings, 
and pavilion, and arches, and roofs, this gorgeous toy of 
the dynasties is one of the grandest aggregates of archi- 
tecture on the round globe. With such advisers and artists 
as Titian, Bernini, da Yinci, del Sarto, Cellini, and Ro- 
mano, with sucii patrons as the Francises, Henry II and 
Catharine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers, the luxurious 
Henry III and IV, Louis XIII and Mazarin, and the great 
Napoleon, with the frippery of Louis Philippe, and the 
supplements of the late Emperor, it seems even more com- 
plete and glorious because it escaped the perilous crisis of 
1871. 

For fifteen years Napoleon ^^onaparte made of this 
world's gallery the pride of Paris and the marvel of other 
nations, b3^ concentrating here from all the public deposi- 
tories of art in the countries he had ravaged and con- 
quered, their masterpieces in bronzes, marbles, canvas, 
tapestry, and precious stones. Wherever his victorious 
banner had floated he sought, and found, and seized the 
choicest products of human genius, alike those of the 
Pagans, the Romans, the Greeks, and the Teutons, alike 
those of the middle eras as of the y^enaisssance, and placed 
them in the Louvre, which he ostentatiously called the 
Napoleon Museum. For fifteen years, as 1 have said, this 
museum became the lodestar of European admiration, 
while the plundered capitals of Italy, Germany, Austria, 
and Russia, mourned the loss of their chiefest treasures. 
The domination of the all-conquering Corsican seemed to 
be widespread and eternal. He was the Colossus that 
bestrode the earth, and when strangers came to look at 
these foreign chefs-tVoeuvre^ rifled from the dazzling palaces 
of subdued monarchs, thej'^ conceived a new idea of the 
majesty of the irrej)ressible soldier, who carried the eagles 
of France from the Seine to the Tiber, and from the Danube 
to the frozen frontier of the Muscovite. Yet in a few 
short months this bright dream had faded. Waterloo 
ended his meteoric career. The magic fighter became a 
fugitive, tlien a guest, and finally a prisoner, who died 
upon a rock in the sea. Then the rescued kings of the 
despoiled cities rushed into Paris to demand the restora- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 175 

tion of their pilfered treasures, and ransacked the Louvre 
for the priceless gifts that had been placed there, as the 
Man of Destiny vainly hoi)ed, forever. 

Such were ray first sad impressions as I sauntered along 
the bright and tessellated floors of the Louvre, the theatre 
of brilliant pageants, dark plots, happy love, and royal 
license. It is the place to realize equally the power and 
insignificance of man, the length of his genius, and the 
shortness of his life. There are said to he five miles of 
galleries under the roofs of these prodigious palaces of the 
Louvre, and my immediate and harassijig thought was my 
utter inability to traverse tliem. The brilliant, deep-toned 
frescoes of the ceilings, framed in their garlands of repoaaae 
and gold, first chained my attention, but as I became 
accustomed to their garish beauty I could distinguish tiie 
various schools and pick out the gems. 

Who could pass unnoticed the "Belle Ferroniere," of da 
Yinci? Perhaps 1 lingered longer by it because I knew 
the story of the last and best-beloved favorite of Francis I, 
and how the artist had expired in the King's arms, after 
bequeathing to posterity the chaste and beautiful features 
of his sweet amor'osa. Or who neglect the " Belle Jardi- 
niere," of Raphael ; or the Ecce Homo and Magdalen of 
Guido? With the Venus de Milo, and Jean Goujon's 
celebrated Diana, an enduring tribute to his celebrated 
patroness, these are the universal magnets. 

The earlj^ French art is nothing more than a close tran- 
scription of the Italian schools, as the finest specimens of 
Claude Lorraine, Poussin, Freminet, and Vernet bear tes- 
timony. Poussin, perhaps the greatest of French masters, 
studied his art in Rome, and his style is strongly imbued 
with the spirit of renaissance. Le Sueur was the first of this 
galaxy who circumscribed his duties to Paris, and though 
he left some fair models of his labor, his star was ectipsed 
by his aspiring rival, Le Brun, who followed the school of 
Poussin. Still later the studies of Watteau, Greuze, and 
David seem to have inaugurated and fixed in permanent 
fame the present French choice of forms and the mode of 
treating them. 

Certain it is the modern French possess none of the 
pathos and direful beauty of the early Italians. The latter 
were possessed with a soul for depicting woful resignation 
and appealing grief, harrowing lamentations and painful 
meditations; while the former portray nature in its mature 
glow of luscious life and loveliness. I had read much of 



176 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the Spanish tj'pe, Yalasquez and Murillo, but I confess 
freely so far in my experience I divine no beaut}^ ; the 
females impressed me as travesties on an eccentric origi- 
nal, and the male figures as fierce, fantastic, and unreal. 

In the Rubens gallery 1 was dazed by the number and 
size of his works ; even with his renowned assistants he 
seemed a supernatural worker. Fifty or sixty historical, 
mytliological, and scriptural rei)resentations, each measur- 
ing lOx 16, were conspicuous for their boldness of outline 
and radiance of coloring. These alone are self-evident of 
the indefatigable energies of their creator, to say notliing 
of the hundreds that grace ever3^ gallery and palace, and 
many private liomes throughout Europe. I notice that 
he was fond of sketching himself, and into all his " Holy 
Families" were woven tlie portraits of his kindred. His 
twenty productions relating to the career of Marie de 
Medici are regarded as valuable studies for acolytes ; this 
ssalon was thronged by copyists taking miniature models 
of the great antitype. 

The apartments devoted to faience,^ majolica, carved 
ivories, terra-cotta, and della Robbia bas-reliefs stretch far 
away in interminable array. But one has not tiie time to 
linger here and stud}'^ fine arts and history ; the wealth of 
the first seems to be continuali3' ell)Owing the last from its 
equitable pedestal. As 1 passed down the steps where 
Coligny had passed, an honored guest, at a nuptial feast, 
two days before he was overtaken by traitorous perfidy of 
the king, the bell of St. Germain I'Auxerrois sent forth a 
silver music that would have fallen melodiously upon the 
"hollow of mine ear" had it not been marred with the 
recollection of the signal for the commencement of the 
bloody carnival on the appalling St. Bartholomew's day, 
three hundred 3ears ago. 

But now sentinels listlessly patrol their round, and the 
troops idle upon the square — 'Hhe wars are done, the Turks 
are drown'd." 

Directly opposite the Louvre, across the Seine, is the 
Palace Luxembourg, containing of modern art what its 
ro^al neighbor holds of mediaeval. The sward was fresh 
and smoothly cropped, the palace and its parterres alive 
with visitors, the marble heroines and patron saints, which 
glisten like white ghosts through the gardens, crude and 
grossly unsN'mmetrical, and the luxuriant foliage of the 
glossy lemon and orange trees in the green tubs skirting 
the plots, made a most touching drama. The children played 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 171 

while the students parleyed. There was neither sigh nor 
whisper, recall nor rebuke, of the profligate life of Marie de 
Medici under these roofs, or her wretchedly penurious 
ending in Cologne. There is no token of the crafty Riche- 
lieu upon the white marble bridge across the stagnant water 
of the canal below, which he so often trod from the Palais 
Cardinale. There is no footprint of the Girondins who lan- 
guished within the walls that had vibrated, and were again 
destined to resound with the mirth and madness of civil war. 
Yes, only a little later and the regal halls were tilled by 
the luscious, extravagant, intellectual houris of the seraglio 
of Barras. From her prison Josephine de Beauliarnais 
was transported to this paradise, and from hence her 
ascendency to queen and empress was steady and speedy. 
In those troublous days women were more magnaniuious 
to each other than in the calm of a conservative govern- 
ment. The intimacy formed in the dungeon of Carmes, 
between Madame Tallien and Josephine, resulted in tiieir 
becoming the unjealous favorites of the Director Barras. 
It was Tallien who brought the widow of Beauharnais to the 
ruler, and so sincere was the feminine friendship she enter- 
tained for her friend, that siie was quite willing that Josepli- 
ine should share with her tiie affections and protection of 
the republican voluptuary. There is no trace now of the 
debauchery and revels of the beautiful woman in her Greek 
costume of India muslin embroidered in gold, golden girdle 
fastening the classic toilet about the waist, and rare cameos 
upon her shoulders^ nor of the witty, racy, 3'et gentle 
empress in perspective; nor of Lange of the Comedie 
rran§aise, except what is restored by memory, often at 
once trustful and hurtful. 

Subsequent to the gay saturnalia, Luxembourg was the 
seat of the Imperial Senate, and under Louis Philippe the 
meeting of the Chamber of Peers. Here Louis Blanc con- 
gregated the socialists, and now it is the home of the Prefect 
of the Seine. 

An old country like France, with its great benefactors 
and rulers, its artists and its tyrants in their graves, each 
leaving behind nothing alive, so to speak, but the enduring 
memories of bad deeds or the lasting monuments of noble 
works, is the study of the ages. Over their marble sar- 
cophagi we recall these authors of evil and of good, and 
so collect from the retrospect at once mournings and hopes. 
Oddest of all, most of the wrongs of the past were the pro- 
duce of French kings, and so also were the lovely works 



178 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

of ait they encouraged and paid for. Perhaps it seems to 
have been reserved that as they planted in blood and tears, 
the harvest in the fulness of time should be gathered by a 
republican posterity, whose ancestors these tyrants hunted, 
impoverished, and forced to fight for them. 



LETTER XXXVIII. 

"Versailles ! — Up the chestnut alley, 
All in flower, so white and pure, 
Strut the red ^nd yellow lacqueys 
Of this Madame Pompadour." 

Thornbury. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

Keflecting upon it now, in the sweet French starlight, 
the whole of my visit to Versailles was a fiasco. I found 
the seat of political government as dull as Goldsmith's 
*' Deserted Village," and what added to the dulness was 
the unexpected absence of the statesmen from their legis- 
lative hall. Yet the railway route was full of interest; 
the scener}^, the iiabits of the people in the antique villages, 
the old palaces, the shops, cafes, and places of public wor- 
ship, were all studies. 

We passed through a perfect arbor of perfumed flowers 
and grasses, chateaux gleaming through the dense foliage; 
the splash of frequent fountains; silent statuary, as if on 
guard against intruders; white-capped women thronging 
the streets of the hamlets contrasted with blue-bloused 
men driving great horses and oxen; females in short petti- 
coats and sabots, bending over the gardens where the vege- 
tables of voracious Paris are grown ; now and then a priest, 
in long serge gown and shovel-hat, would cross the scene, 
like a figure from the seventeenth century, and occasionally 
a soldier like a Lilliputian image would strut past like an 
actor in a French farce. It was a moving picture to my 
American vision, and I had scarcely time to make a note 
of my fellow-passengers before we swept into the beautiful 
station, to find ourselves in the political capital of France, 
the scene of centuries of revolution, luxurious profligacy, 
joyous events with sorrowful terminations, and the rendez- 
vous in the summer of 1871 of the German invaders. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 179 

From St. Lazare station, the first important point we 
approached was Mount Valerien ; from this fort the sliell 
was thrown that fell upon and destroyed the palace at St. 
Cloud. But in the quiet noonday hush there was not a 
trace of the fast and furious firing seven years ago. On 
we rushed through a colonnade of tnll, slim poplars, the 
emblems of equality and liberty, till we paused at St. 
Cloud, the ancient tribunal of monarchical rule, and the 
summer residence of the late hapless Napoleon III. I 
could see the sweet, shady retreats of the wooded park 
from my seat at the car-window. Thence our route ex- 
tended through a portion of the grand pare to the adja- 
cent town of Sevres. In the lanes I saw the artisans of 
the royal manufactory of jewelled porcelain and patetendre. 
This was the toy coaxed b}' Madame de Pompadour from 
Louis XV, under whose regal patronage it made a marked 
advance, and then chemists and artists endeavored to rival 
one another in the invention of new and exquisite pigments 
and designs to adorn the gems of clay. The hleu de roi^ 
and Pompadour pink, were employed with great effect 
upon vases and services in compliment to the princely 
benefactors. After this I fell to studying my companions 
in the compartment. Opposite was the man of books, with 
his portfolio and journal, Le Temps^ and magazine. Revue 
des Mondes^ his black silk skull-cap, and smail white, deli- 
cate hand, and solitaire diamond ring; beside him an 
elderly lady~and a poodle— a sweet woman with a faded 
face, and an air of rest and calm that seemed a foil to the 
elegant valet, who stood ready to aid her from the train; 
next was a flashingly beautiful girl, whose pet was not a 
lap-dog, but a handsome officer in blue uniform, with silver 
cording and epaulettes; he evidently required greater 
aplomb and diplomacy to manage than the elder lady's 
companion, but she was full of the electricity of youth and 
health, and capable of the task. They took us to be Eng- 
lish strangers, as I could understand by the conversation, 
but when I chatted a little French of my own, there was 
a sudden well-bred silence, and then a confusing smile; 
they accepted my challenge as a fair Roland for their 
Oliver. 

Needless that I should recount the stor}'- of Versailles, 
with its illustrious neighbors in a near circle, St. Denis, St. 
Cloud, St. Germain, Malmaison, Sevres, Vincennes, and 
Sceaux; nor extol luxurious fields, massive forests, gray 
castles, bright cascades, sequestered promenades, and the 



180 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

superb Seine winding like a silver scarf round centuried 
towers, and towns; nor of the three grand avenues, Paris, 
St. Cloud, and Sceaux; nor of the great churches, St. Louis, 
the Prefecture, and the Chancery; nor beyond all the pal- 
aces, with their storied picture galleries, parks, lakes, 
Granger}', private theatre, chapel, fountains, statues, col- 
leges, schools, literary and public edifices. 

Yes! The incense of favored women hangs about the 
spot; not one of them without a poison in her storj^ 
Maintenon, the ruler of France, and mistress of Grande 
Trianon, had never touched the soft hand of Fortune until 
Louis XIV was subdued by tiie importunities and acumen 
of the ''widow Scarron;" as her biographer sa3^s, "she was 
born in a prison, bred in pov^erty, the widow of a cripple, 
and wife of a king." Le Petit Trianon was erected for 
Madame de Pompadour, who carried more than one stain 
upon lier vice-regal page of life. Here the luxurious 
daughter of Marie Theresa amused herself with the extrav- 
agant toy, the miniature Swiss village, regardless of her 
approaching fate at the guillotine; and where do we find 
sadder anecdotes than the narrative of the last days of 
Jose[)hine and Eugenie? so that the Lares and Penates of 
Versailles seem to be executing some dread decree upon 
the fair and unfortunate occupants of her double palaces. 

But of all this we can read in history, and our day seems 
to be in sympath}^ with the past. Cocher was rather an 
intelligent bourgeoises with the faculty of conversation 
largely developed, and a fair appreciation of the beauties 
of nature and art. Versailles is not a pretty town, but 
cocher addressed himself to the task of pleasing, and drove 
us through dark and leafy avenues, closed in on either side 
b}' heavy walls of foliage, where the trees had been trimmed 
and garlanded in the most novel and fantastic manner; he 
extolled the Empire, and denounced the Kepublic, and 
glorified the Napoleonic dynasties; and finding us com- 
plaissant and chatty, he demanded his pour boire before 
we dismissed him, and having enjoyed it on the way vol- 
unteered to conduct us to an excellent cafe for lunch. 
While I was indulging an ecstasy of praise of the obliging 
Frenchman, we were driven to what looked very like a 
''beer shop." Undaunted by appearances, we ordered 
lunch, and oh! what adisenciiantmcnt. But cocher had taken 
French leave, and when there we began to investigate our 
bargain. Tiie wily driver had guided us to a fourtii-class res- 
taurant, the proprietor evidently his confederate. I saw it 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 181 

all too late, when the unsavory repast was spread before 
us. What were we to do? To dispute was vain; to par- 
take impossible. The fowl was old and tough, the butter 
too strong for its weight, and the wine like raspberry vine- 
gar. Our only alternative was to pay and leave the den. 
We hastened to Paris oppressed with the hunger and 
thirst; but as the poet says, "there is no cloud however 
black but what has its silver lining," and if the poet did 
not say it, it is an inspiration of my own. In the Cafe 
Durand, under the sacred shadow of the Madelaine, and 
close to the noble and monumental Rue Royal, we forgot 
our grief and forgave our deceiver. 

To this restaurant, and the Cafe Riche, are ascribed the 
finest cuisines in Paris by epicures. 

I believe when I first opened my diary to chronicle the 
pleasures and disappointments of tlie day, I said I medi- 
tated upon the day as a fiasco; but the remark must be 
frankly discounted by the fact that I had not quite recov- 
ered my temper. Nol let me be just, and state the dinner 
at Voisin's was no fuux pas! 



LETTER XXXIX, 

** I love no land so well as that of France, 
Land of Napoleon and Charlemagne, 
Renowned for valor, women, wit, and dance, 
For racy Burgundy and bright Champagne, 
Whose only word in battle is Advance." 

Ce-ason. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

On the Champs Elysees legions of wraithlike memories 
continually elbow the dramatis personse of to-day from 
their equitable dominion. 

Once upon the broad avenue^ it is not the gay holiday- 
makers, filling the sidewalks, the voitures^ and the little 
iron chairs, a sou apiece, that surprise and please so much, 
as the brilliant and famous characters and events that seem 
to reappear from the realm of history and romance. Life 
on the '* Elysian Fields" is always entrancing, but to realize 
it to the full you must mingle with the Joyous multitude 
16 



182 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

on Sinida}'. Nothing in Paris attains such a variety of 
pleasure as this multitude on the Sabbath. It is the day 
of the opera and the oratories; the church and the concerts; 
the players and the priests; the unity of sin and sacrament. 

Yes! there are the student and his fair, fat grisette, sitting 
under the chestnuts, eating peanuts and bon-bons ; the good 
boiirgeoise women with their large, white hands, resting 
extended upon their ample knees, around their skirts cling- 
ing three or four little ones chattering French, with a fluency 
and dainty accent that bring to my cheek a blush of my 
own inefiicienc}^ ; then troops of other happy children — the 
])rogeny of the uppertendom — with their white-capped at- 
tendants ; the city voitures and cabs for the democracy ; the 
glittering equipages and jewelled trappings of the English 
and American money kings, and the lumbering vehicles 
bearing upon their panels the heraldry of the royalists of 
St. Germain. But it is not only these that throng the 
mental vision ; there are the ghosts of Marie de M^dicis, 
the Louises, the savages of the Director3', the ladies of tlie 
first Emi)ire, and the recollections of its later travestie, 
that rouse us to the contrast between this bright to-day 
and the long-vanished yesterdays. 

And surely the Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, Column 
of Luxor, and Bois du Boulogne, are magical combinations, 
and on this gloricnis day, more lovely and more bewilder- 
ing than even my exulting expectation had painted. *'A 
mighty maze! but not without a plan." To enhance these 
attractions. Nature appeared in her richest robe and sweet- 
est mood. The air was an elixir, the flowers heav}' with 
their own aroma, the luxuriance of the foliage seemed 
forced, and the sun, though brilliant, was not oppressive. 

Along the superb avenue — much broader than our Broad 
Street — with deep pavements for pedestrians, and the centre 
drive devoted to horses and vehicles, extending nearl}- three 
miles to the gates of the Bois, we waudered and wondered. 
Advancing toward the Arc de i'Etoile, the lett is flanked 
by statel}' palaces, while upon the right, through the 
branching shade, gleams the Palais d^Elysee^ the home of 
the Marshal President, and the summer-gardens. As the 
summit of the grand allee is reached, there sits the tri- 
umi)hal arch to receive you under its massive portals, 
overlooking the surrounding vicinage, the nucleus of a 
radius of fine streets, like beams from a central star, whose 
names i^erpetuate the trophies of Napoleon, and whose 
viceregal ediftces are the homes of the American colony ; it 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 183 

is one brilliant paradise of history, art, diplomacy, and 
wealth. 

This vast, yet symmetrical Dome of Victory, under 
whose dark arches have marched the royal processions that 
swept away and succeeded the Napoleonic djmasty, is a 
daguerreotype in marble of the salient episodes in the 
career of the conquering hero. It was projected by the 
chief as a monument of bravery to the Grande Armee. It 
is a marvellous combination of shields, standards, colossal 
figures, military medallions, and allegorical representations, 
a frozen parable of the Consulate and the First Empire. 
Upon every side and l)y every group we are taught the one 
lesson, the Heroism of war and the Glory of victory. But 
in those days all men were brave, and all men battled for 
empire and power. 

Here the Genius of War seems to be omnipotent. We 
see it inciting tiie chivalric Mars to motion; we see it 
cheering the young warrior on to the salvation of his 
country, while he tears himself from the restraining arms 
of his father, and turns from his grief-stricken young wife, 
who holds forth appealingly the body of their dead child ; 
and we' see it in the confusion of battle and carnase. Then 
as the reward of all his sacrifices comes Victory with the 
crown of laurels, and History with her stylus and scroll, 
chronicling his heroic deeds. Over all is the emblem of 
gentle, gracious Peace, with the sword sheathed, " for he 
and his sword did earn his chronicled At his side Agri- 
culture, with the harvest of fruit and grain, and the sweet 
domestic sway of wife and children. 

The faces upon the Arch are all portraits, and the trum- 
pets of Fame are proclaiming to the whole world that 
France has conquered her foes. I saw the marvellous con- 
ceits with breathless delight. It is a consummation of art, 
a memorable tribute to valor, a proud cenotaph of a people's 
gratitude. Yet under this massive monument of French 
genius to French bravery, the stolid and resistless Germans 
marched in 1871, after they had conquered Napoleon' III. 
This to the French must have seemed the severest satire of 
Fate. The Emperor a fugitive (like his great uncle), the 
Empress flying from and fearing her own subjects, home- 
less and friendless, while the grim Teuton triumphed over 
alk 

But for philosophy I had little time, and dashed on 
towards the Bois. C>ur fiacre was one among thousands. 
Far more extensive and intricate the maze than at Fair- 



184 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

mount or Central Park, or even Hyde Park, London, 
where, on the iiltra-fasliionable drives one meets notliing 
but wealth and titles, where the police keep out the ple- 
beians, and the mass are too poor and oppressed to ven- 
ture in. 

Here is a rare combination of roj'al livery and republi- 
can harness. At present, Equality is Emperor in France, 
and the ouvrier and Bourbon ride side by side, to the infi- 
nite aversion of the latter, and the ineffable satisfaction of 
the former. 80, as the human ocean poured through the 
Arc, glittering with all the fashions and peoples of the 
world, it was a m3'riad masquerade, where human passions, 
intrigues, schemes, ha>tes, loves, envies, and ambitions, were 
concealed under the guise of frivolity and frolic. 

Once past the Arc de VEtoile^ you stand upon the very 
confines of the American quarter. The large, flaunting 
residence across the way is the sylvan retreat of the Prin- 
cess Bonanza, who empties many sequins from her purse 
for the decoration of her house upon republican fete nights. 
Though the display is ample and costly, the effect produced 
is not always sufficient unto the desires of the Princess; 
there is a murmur of complaint against the "horrid arch" 
which obstructs the brilliant scene. It was sheer ingrati- 
tude — nay, cruelty — for the municipal authorities to refuse 
to remove or to sell that "horrid thing" at the solicitation 
of the exacting Princess. Our Minister resides upon the 
Avenue Josephine; our Commissioner-General to the Ex- 
position upon Avenue d'Eylau; Dr. Thomas Evans, pro- 
prietor of the American Register^ in a palatial home upon 
the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne; and, indeed, there is not 
an avenue of the famous radius but what is odorous with 
Americans. My compatriots seem to flock thither from 
intuition, as do the pigeons of St. Mark to the Piazza in 
Venice, or the Jews to their wailing place. 

Paris soldiers and Paris horses resemble each other 
closel}'. The same process seems to have produced both, 
and both indifferently. There was not enough to complete 
a full-sized soldier or a full-sized horse, and I did not won- 
der when I heard the tall Germans and their big steeds 
contrasted with these little people. Their legs are too 
short, and their bodies too long, and the same pecularities 
are pronouncedly observable in the animal and the man. 
The famous Centaur has really found a claim to ni}' cre- 
dulity since I have studied these two Gallic creations ; 
surely this quadruped, to all appearances, was produced 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 185 

as a component part of the soldier, and not to draw the 
awkward, clnmsy, graceless carriages of the Imperialists. 
I remember how the choice specimens of conveyances on 
exhibition at the Centennial of Frencli manufactnre, im- 
pressed me by their ponderons size and looselj'-jointed 
hinges, and even here in the Yery midst' of these inelegant 
establishments my American eye refnses to become recon- 
ciled. They look like great Black Marias, conveying com- 
mon offenders to jail. 

The Bois swams with hnmankind between 4 and 6 p.m.; 
it is the hour to meet Dame Fashion, and at 1 it is as ten- 
antless as the lone desert; a solitude suggestive of spectres, 
banditti, poniards, a futile struggle, and a dark death. Ancl 
yet this is the sweetest and most seductive hour at the 
Bois, when the garish flare of the mode has passed away, 
leaving soft, twinkling stars and deepening shadows, for 
your companions. 

When I first saw the great French park, it was in the 
mellow glow of the setting sun's last rays, that were 
touching the mazarine blue and golden clouds into a glory 
of color; when its radiance played among the fountain- 
spray, and sank to rest in Dpal splendor on the breast of 
the lake. A'gain, when the angels had unfurled the curtains 
of the night, and Nature's gas-jets were all aglow, I rode 
between the bronze foliage and lingered in the ai-omatic 
influences, until Nymphs and Satyrs seemed to whisper 
around me. In the lusty glare of noon, I penetrated the 
wood again, as far as the gi^and cascade and Pre Gatelan, 
where we dined upon the dainties of a Parisian repast, 
surrounded by delicious flowers and trees of every clime. 

The Bois de Boulogne is not a park of Nature's handi- 
craft alone, but wealth and art have conspired to render it 
a fitting abode for the gods. Though dolefully damaged 
by the siege of 1871, artisans and landscape gardeners are 
constantly repairing the work of the Fire fiend. 

Through the Allee de Lnngchamps the Hippodrome de 
Longchamps is reached, the race-course of the Jockey 
Club, where the thoroughbreds are trotted upon the full, 
fresh sward. The course resembles a royal village in the 
beauty of its ornate rural architecture, the Emperor's pa- 
vilion and the noble Rothschild's villa. 

Within sight of the course is the craggy mound of Long- 
champs, the rush of water ever flowing into the basin be- 
low and drifting away in two winding streams. All about 
the paths are graded and curved with an infinite grace, and 

16* 



186 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

ornamented by bowers, and arbors, and stretches of dense 
forest land. 

Further on we have the Theatre des Fleurs, whose 
scenery is not the painted canvas of artists, but the shrub- 
bery-, and grottos, and stream, and firmament of Nature, 
beautified by modern skill. 

History and romance have garlanded the Bois with a 
whole wreath of legends, where the amaranth of immor- 
tality and the poppy of death are entwined upon one stem; 
wliere the olive of peace and the wheat of prosperity are 
grouped with the rose of York and Lancaster proclaiming 
war; where the houstonia of content rests upon the very 
breast of the hollyhock of ambition ; where the cypress of 
despair has coiled its tendrils in inextricable mockery about 
the hawthorn of hope; and where the marigold of cruelty, 
with its twin sister lotus, revenge, are couched with the 
balm of sympathy upon a bed of fir — time, 



/ 



LETTER XL. 

" The looks of ye, ma'am, rather suits me, 
The Avages you offer will do, 
But then I can't enter your service 

Without a condition or two ; 
And now to begin is the kitchen. 

Commodious, with plenty of light, 
And fit, you know, for entertainin' 
Such friends as I like to invite." 

Anonymous. 

Parts, May, 1878. 

I HAVE been newly interested in the eternal question of 
servant-girlism. Not on the point of wages, but on the 
larger subject of dress. And 1 think I have gathered a 
few comparative items that will })e interesting at home. 
Nothing has given me more mental concern than the very 
great difference between the girls out at service in Europe 
and their sisters in the United States. I am not speaking 
of those who are retained through generations in wealthy 
and aristrocratic houses, and have become an integral 
part of these titled establishments, but of the vast aimy 
of females wjio earji a livelihood in hotels and ordinary 
families. In London and Paris the usual domestic is 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 18t 

almost a slave, receiving little remuneration except from 
guests, and in nearly all cases far better educated and 
better behaved than the corresponding class in America. 
The civility and subordination of the foreign servant-girls 
resemble the docility and sprightliness of the colored 
women of the South, only the Europeans are more thor- 
oughly trained by their associations, and contrast painfully 
with the insolence of too many of the importations from 
the Emerald Isle in our American households. 

Industry and a practical knowledge of the fine as well as 
the useful arts is the primal ambition of the Frenchwoman. 
Her struggle is to become worthy of her place, and event- 
ually to ascend in the social scale. On the other hand, 
assumption is the chief virtue of her Celtic sister. Her first 
taste of America does not prompt her to acquire under- 
standing and skill, but to copy expensive fashions. While 
Elise is wandering through the Louvre gaining a knowledge 
of paintings and ceramics, Bridget only sees the follies of 
the American lady of society. If Madame is a leader of 
the mode^ Bridget must be equally exquisite in the choice 
of her own toilets, and in this passion she often neglects 
tlie duties for which she has been em[)lo3'ed. She forgets 
that she has been duplicating her mistress's style, and fre- 
quently so far oversteps her prescribed orbit as to advise 
the head of the house how to dress, 

♦ I have already told you hov>^ many chambers our poor 
femmie^de-chamhre^ Jeanne, must arrange and how many 
pails of water she must carry to the fifth and sixth stories 
in a day, and she is a fair type of a system ; one of millions 
in Europe. In addition to her vernacular German, she 
speaks French adrairal)Iy, English well, and is a woman of 
considerable information. Yet this poor creature has no 
leisure to devote to gewgaws and frippery; very rarely 
does she enjoy God's pure air and the thousand pleasing 
inventions of modern life When she lays down brush and 
broom at eleven o'clock, it is to retire to rest. 

There are legions as poor as Jeanne in these great cen- 
tres of population, that to retain their situations must 
drudge and obey silently. The moment a murmur of com- 
plaint escapes them they are mercilessly ejected, and the 
vacancy supplied by another hungry one. 

On duty, the French girls are at all times neat and 
orderly. When taking their outing, a plain dress minus 
frills and furbelows, an amplitude of white apron, and a 
crisp white cap carelully crimped, is the universal uniform. 



188 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

In London the average girl is called "slavie," and her 
laboring regalia is invariably a smudge on her nose, a 
soiled, tattered dress, slipshod shoes, and hair as frowsy 
as a bird's nest. Off duty, she aijpears in light calico 
dress, straw bonnet, and cloth sacque or faded shawl in 
midwinter. 

Upon my own dear enfranchised shores, our ministers 
plenipotentiary of the culinary department copy the mis- 
tress of the house, even to the details of shapes and colors. 
When my friend purchased a sage-hued silk, her nursemaid 
copied it in an alpaca of the same color; when my cham- 
bermaid ex[)ressed her intense admiration for the cut of my 
black silk princess robe and mantle, it did not strike me 
that three weeks afterward I should behold her clad in its 
model of cashmere, and still greater was my amazement 
when she dazzled my vision in pink lawn after seeing my 
French organdy of the same shade. This practice is 
wholly unknown amongst the girls out at service in Europe. 
With us the passion extends not only to blonde Bridget, but 
to dusky Dinah. Of course there are exceptions in the 
sensible, striving girls who place their earnings in the 
building associations and trust companies, but the rule is 
those who expend their weekly wages upon costly para- 
phernalia. 

If 3^ou will call at any of the great establishments in 
Philadelphia, like Wanamaker's, where all varieties of wo- 
men's wear are sold at all prices, you will be surprised at 
the vast sums laid out on the decoration of the persons of 
our female helj). They may not buy the best, but they 
spend enormously in silks, laces, hose, bonnets, gloves, and 
underwear, and when you see them on Sundays or holi<lays, 
you are astounded at the expensive elegance of man}' of 
their outfits. 1 do not speak of this habit to complain of 
it so much as to make a note of it. A Boston lady, now 
here, says that the furor for dress amongst these classes 
in the New England towns often leads to evil, and has 
given great pain to humane women who desire to see the 
servant class improved and elevated. It is a phase of 
society' peculiar to the United States, and is a result of our 
freedom, an inevitable outgrowth of our emancipated foim 
of government, that what one woman may do all can try to 
follow; nor am I disposed to dwell upon the bad effects this 
insane appetite for dress must have upon the discipline of 
the household and the future of those who manage it. That 
is the right of the servant as it is of tlie mistress. But 
surely a word on a sul»ject that all of us feel can do no 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 189 

harm. Both sides may learn and unlearn from each other. 
Nor can the example of the Old World servant-girl be held 
up here for imitation any more than our own luxurious 
ways should be displayed to mislead our Milesian sisters. 
Are we ourselves guiltless? Bridget is no longer Irish 
when she comes to settle in America. She is a citizen of 
tlie great Republic, and if she is insolent, extravagant, and 
dangerous as an imitator, we must even bear with her and 
try to lead her into better manners by our moderation and 
humanity. She comes here to the great school, and we 
are at once her teacher and her friend. An American lady 
is, therefore, a true missionary. 



LETTER XL I. 

*' When shall I begin with the endless delights 
Of this Eden of millinery, monkeys and sights, 
This dear busy place where there's nothing transacting 
But dressing and dinnering, dancing and acting ?" 

Tom Moore. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

To the average American the theatres of Paris are the 
superior cynosure, and they are all so attractive and inter- 
esting I scarcely know at which to begin. The New Opera 
perhaps ? Yes ! there is surely much to be said of that 
transcendent edifice. Although I have been lingering in 
the vicinity a month, it is a constant study and delight. I 
am charmed by its elaborate grandeur, by its florid capitals, 
convolved ornaments, crowning Corinthian columns, its 
multudinous figures, protoplasts in bronze on the niches 
of the fagade., its frozen immortelles of lyric and dramatic 
savants. There are adverse opinions of the merit of its 
architecture, many insisting that the prodigality of orna- 
mentation is oppressive ; but then it is a masterpiece of 
French magnificence, and every one gazes upon it with 
rapture. 

The whole auditorium has ItOO places. The seats in 
the orchestra and baignoires — small boxes or tubs under 
the first loges, to which only men are admitted — sell for 
twelve and ten francs apiece. Tlie first balcony of boxes 
is the property of the nobility and the part owners of the 



190 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Acaclemie; then we, of the plebeian mass, are permitted a 
place in any of the other tiers or boxes by paying seven, 
ten, fifteen, or twenty-two francs eacli. Upon granrl festas, 
when the kings and qneens of the profession appear, seats 
are sold at a preminm, and handsome sums are realized 
by their titled possessors. 

The wealth expended npon the lobby, grand stairway, 
and foyer is fabulons. The stairway is a combination of 
all the marbles and agates of the chalcedonic plains of 
Europe and the East. Egyptian alabaster, verde antique, 
lapis lazuli, carnelian, and a hundred other species of onyx 
are grouped into stony radiance. From the vaulted dome 
angels, chnbbj'- cupids, muses, and gods look down upon 
the luxurious, lavish, sacrilegious throngs trampling the 
precious mosaics underfoot. I walked into one of the 
third-story balconies overhanging the grand escalier^ to 
driuk in the essence of ro^^al wealth and sinful extrava- 
gance on every side. But the salle de promenoAe is the 
loadstar of the interior. It is a wildering aggregate of 
the glitter of gold and the brilliancy of frescoes, one pris- 
matic lustre of glass and lights, a vast sheen of mirrors, 
the saliency of repoufise^ glittering colonnades, and lofty 
ceilino;, and here it is that the vast audience make a ren- 
dezvous during the entre-acts^ a Vanity Fair unequalled in 
the universe. 

Representations take place three times a week at the 
Grand Opera, Monday's, Wednesdays, and Frida3^s, and 
these performances are also unsurpassed by any in the 
world. The scholars from the Conservatoire de Musique 
constitute the choruses, and the ballet is composed of the 
famous dancers of Europe. In addition to the eleven mil- 
lions paid out of the national treasury for this regal gew- 
gaw, a subsidy is granted by the government of 800,000 
francs annually, and during the empire it received 100,000 
francs from its progenitor. Napoleon III. The Republicans 
are almost as generous to art and music as the kings. 

We secured our places for '* Les Huguenots," and though 
the repertoire was cast with excellence, and the music un- 
surpassed that ushers in that direful 24th of August, 1572, 
it seemed to me a little profane that so light and volatile 
a people should render a creation more in harmony with 
the mournful Italians or the ponderous Germans. 

My greatest regret is that I was not in Paris before the 
lenten season, during the epoch of mad foll3^ and riotous 
insouciaiice^ when the Nouve.l Opera reaches the height of 
French brilliancy and drollerj- in the frantic hals masques 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 191 

of the carnival. The present costly edifice is only in the 
foetus of its saturnalian experience, but what instances of 
frolic and fun, intrigue and equivoque, sin and scandal, 
could be revealed b^' every stick and stone of the old 
Opera on the Rue Ldpelletier 1 These divertisements are 
alvvaj'S speciall}' organized by the favorites of the principal 
theatres of Paris, and hugely enjoyed by all Paris. The 
advocates of pleasure mingle in the wild whirl, and offici- 
ate as vestals at the altars of Bacchus, while the more cir- 
cumspect connoisseur gratifies his sated palate behind the 
shadow of the impenetrable foliage sheltering his palace in 
the Quartier St. Germain, and only rarely comes to the 
Bal de I'Opera to enjoy the orgies of his less patrician 
contemporaries. 

The Oomedie Fran9aise, on the Rue Richelieu, in the 
Palais Royal, the scene of the triumphs of Duchenois, 
Mars, Rachel, Talma, — father and daughter, — Delaunay, 
Got, and Bernhardt, who is now portraying Dona Sol in 
Yictor Hugo's Her-nani^ is really the outgrowth of the 
Hotel Bourgoyne, purchased by the then only organized 
company in Paris, the Troupe Royal, three centuries ago. 
It was in this primitive play-house that the masterpieces of 
Racine, the sublime and pathetic delineator of womanly 
passion, and Corneille, who is called the father of Frencii 
tragedy and the Gallic Euripides, were first represented 
and won the laurels of their authors. Three-quarters of a 
century subsequently Moliere entered the litearte-dramatic 
arena, and Louis XI II was so much more delighted with 
his efforts as a theatrical zealot than royal valet de chamhre^ 
that he vouchsafed him a theatre in the Palais du Louvre, 
Avhere, having attracted the attention of the ecclesiastical 
premier, Cardinal Richelieu, the aspiring dramatist was 
granted another stage of action in the regal-clerical Palais 
Ro3'al. 

Though Moliere was preceded and succeeded by many 
famous men, yet he is the presiding genius of the Theatre 
Fraugais, and in the vicinity I daily pass the fountain and 
street dedicated to the dead poet, and the house where he 
breathed his last in sight of the court of his amaranthine 
glories. 

We are told that the drama is retrograding, and that 
more attention is paid to the efl'ect and mannerism than 
to exquisite finish and intensity of action. They tell us 
that the omnipotent Bernhardt does not wear gracefuly the 
mantle of her illustrious countrywoman, Rachel, although 
she nightl_)' holds here audiences breathless by her weird 



192 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

grace, painful beauty, and anguished emotions in Phedra^ 
tlie Cid^ the Sphynx^ and Athalie; they tell us that Got 
and Mounet-Sully are raw and lack polish in comparison 
with Delaunay and Coquelin ; yet we read in history 
that Moliere's dramatic enterprise was commenced by only 
tliree fiddles at the wings of the stage, and Corneille's 
Le Cid was produced with only "a room with four 
doors," and other plays with as ridiculous a dearth of ap- 
pointments ; some being equipped with only two daggers 
and others with three papers. We know that Moliere had 
not reached the topmost round in the ladder of fame until 
Mars came to strengthen his inspired lines by her genius 
and power, and that neither she nor Rachel attained the 
apogee of renown by one unbroken line of progress. But 
Bernhardt dead, will wield a far more potential wand than 
Bernhardt alive, though even now not only Paris, but all 
the world have knelt at her shrine to offer her adoration 
and gold. When the sage philosopher Hugo returns from 
a rehearsal at the Fran§aise after Bernhardt has rendered 
a true ideal of his creation, he exclaims in a glow of French 
beatitude, "I have just kissed the hand of a queen." 

The Theatre Fran§ais has a seating capacity of 1405 
places; those of the best location commanding thirteen 
francs. Single fauteuils in the first boxes may be pro- 
cured for nine francs, and if you do not object to a sofa in 
the third gallery you may enjoy the vagaries of the inimi- 
table Sara for the vulgar sum of four francs. This house 
appears to enjoy all the blessings vouchsafed to the pro- 
fession. It not only has exclusive license to produce 
tragedy, but a claim on every scholar of the Conservatoire, 
which right it does not neglect to exercise, and is so 
enabled to secure ever}'^ student with the promise of a fair 
future. Its annual subsidy from the Government is $48,000. 

At the Opera Comique in the Place Boieldieu, where 
Giraudet is singing Peter in L'^Etoile du Nord, the prices 
of admission are somewhat more reasonable, though the 
cast of character is not so fine as I have seen at home. 

The Varieties on the Boulevard Montmartre is the palace 
of vaudeville, where the fair and fat Judic indulges her 
antics to the delectation of her countless admirers, in the 
naughty character of Niniche or La Comtesse de Gorniska. 

She plays her dual role of prude and coquette as only a 
Frenchwoman "to the manner born" can. When we see 
her at Danville, with the count, her husband, she is the 
quintessence of discretion and deliberation, even to the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 193 

commendable fawn-colored silk gown and reputable brown 
hair a la grecque ; but when she comes to Paris on a ram- 
page, accompanied by one of her old associates, to whom 
she is known as Niniche^ the stately, stilted toga of cir- 
cumspection has evaporated, and we gaze upon her in all 
the ravishing and half-naked radiance of yellow hair, pale- 
blue silk, and arch little feet encased in satin slippers, and 
through the apartment and about its mistress there is an 
aroma of dash and dare sufficiently eloquent to need no 
interpretation. Madame Judic is a woman of at least 
thirty-eight, with the gift of appearing twenty or forty ac- 
cording to caprice. She has the sweet, playful, pathetic 
voice peculiar to the French ; never great, ever gratifying. 
The Varieties has ever been the cradle of representations 
bordering on the limitation of decency ; yet who does not 
patronize it? and simply because all who go indulge in a 
hearty, harmless laugh. 

The Odeon, in the Place I'Odeon, the second Fran9aise 
and the favorite resort of the students, has 1500 places, 
that vary in price from ten to three francs, and is the 
home of legitimate drama. The '' Danichefs," so well re- 
membered in America, is now enjoying an unprecedented 
run there. 

At the Porte St. Martin, on the Boulevard St. Martin, 
Victor Hugo's horrible and realistic Les Miserahles is 
drawing vast multitudes. The audiences of this house 
have craved food of thrilling cruelty ever since the days 
when Mademoiselle Georges presented " Lucrece Borgia" 
to that public, and fed the home-life of the Palais Tuileries 
with the bones of contention and gossip. 

The French are an exacting, laughter-loving clan, and 
at man}^ of the playhouses three or lour separate perform- 
ances are given in one evening, all attractive and worthy 
of a distinct chronicle in my diary if I had room. 

Despite the naturally impulsive incontinent French char- 
acter, the audiences do not yield to the spirit of demon- 
stration like the Americans and English. The applause 
is conducted upon a more systematic plan. The actors 
and playwrights do not hazard their reputations upon 
the capricious appetites of a promiscuous mass; they 
employ their claqueurs to lead and educate their houses, 
to anticipate the worthy points in the drama, to hint at 
the meritorious renditions of the author, and to temper the 
popular emotion to the strength of the sentiment. These 
claqiieni's are a component element of the corpa dramatique , 
17 



194 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

nnd disciplined to their duties by their patronizing artists. 
The Bernhardt, Croizette, and Got pay them well, and 
drill them as acclaimers on to glory as they play. They 
are not allowed to permit the vulgar mass to interriri)t line 
grande passion when Bernhardt is plunged into a whirl- 
wind of agony ; with their aid she holds the tension of every 
nerve in the tightest coil until the final lines, and then she 
is wafted to heaven with lier hearers in a French craze of 
enthusiasm. Besides infusing the artist with the fire of 
success, this custom serves as a pioneer to the pla3'goer ; 
it teaches him a virtuous pause, and makes him wait for 
the echo as his own watchword. The claque is the i)ro- 
duct of centuries. Years ago, when tragedies of intense 
emotion w^ere to be enacted, females of the same profession 
were emploj'^ed to do the crying and fainting; of course I 
looked for these feminine automata, and failing in my 
search am lead to believe that that branch of hired Niobes 
has passed Siway. 

Ever3'where we have the female ushers, as in London. 
-At the Grand Opera they seem to be all over forty-eight, 
many approaching seventy, looking like an antiquated 
brigade in uniform — a black gown, white apron, white cap, 
and an amplitude of flaunting pink ribbon. I am told that 
all these excessively conservative-looking old ladies have 
agitating romances attached to their earlier lives; many of 
them have gladdened the heart of a student in their grisette 
days. The heyday of their youth has long melted into 
gray and grim November, and the}^ have billeted themselves 
upon the dramatic organizations for the remainder of their 
days. They are the veterans of the naughty past. 

The inevitable footstool that they carry about and insist 
upon shoving under every pair of female shoes seems to 
constitute their utmost duty. It was only after I learned 
that an acceptance of this article meant a fee, that I real- 
ized the secret income of this faded fraternity. 

It would seem that all these official or licensed amuse- 
ments would surfeit the French, but nearly every alternate 
house in Paris is a factory of pleasure. Perhaps in so 
saying 1 have unwittingly overstepped the margin ; but 
certainly I shall be safer in the hint that the business of 
enjoyment is here the chief object of man}^ lives. Religion 
is a mere source of idle leisuie, in a word, a luxury. While 
many French take the cream from the surface of pleasure 
themselves, all through this magic city there are thousands 
tuiling to make life entrancing to others, by catering to 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 195 

human appetites and vices. They constantly prove the 
Shakespearian maxim "All the world's a stage," for they 
are an artificial show-people, ever in attitudes, and masks, 
and poses, and colors, and music, and trinkets. They 
seem to have been born to the travestie, and never reach 
the finale until Death comes, and with his icy hand stills 
their vagaries. Even then, in the Morgue or Pere La Chaise, 
the corpse is made a joke or a jollity, the funeral an excuse 
for a fanfaronade, and the tomb a pretext for a playful or 
grotesque memory. 



LETTER XLI I. 

" Now is there then no earthly place 

Where we can rest in dream Elysian, 
Without some curved, round English face 

Popping up near to break the vision ? 
Who knows, if to the West we roam, 
But we may find some blue at home 

Among the blacks of Carolina ; 
Or flying to the eastward sea, 
Some Mrs. Hopkins taking tea 

And toast upon the wall of China." 

Anonymous. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

I confess I do not like to leave Paris, and I say it with 
a faint heart and write it with a faltering hand. Fain 
would I linger at the banquet. "Time cannot wither nor 
custom stale her infinite variety." 

There is so much that is weird and old, fresh and start- 
ling, in the habits and customs of these people, that each 
distinguishing characteristic demands and deserves record. 
And still I do not doubt that the French would be equally 
amused by what they call our equivalent follies. 

We are a domestic nation ; they are a community of 
players. It is the first and chieiest aspiration of Americans, 
and especially of Philadelphians, to possess a comfortable 
— a luxurious — home; the family circle is the sanctuary 
of bliss with us, and all endeavors look eagerly to that 
goal. The Frenchman's home is the Tuileries, the Champs 
Elysees, the Pare Monceaux, the places^ the cafe, or his 
little iron chair and table on the sidewalk. We embellish 



196 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the interior of our houses, because we are more there, and 
derive greater happiness from that altar of the affections ; 
tiiey decorate the street, tlie church, the bench of the 
boulevard, the fountain and the shrine. Every industrious 
man and woman amongst us must aspire to a flower-garden, 
bronzes, and fine furniture in the house, because this is 
where they come when the toil of the day is over, and all 
that is beautiful must be congregated into this haven of 
rest. The French enjoy their parterres, and fountains, and 
monuments in the squares and at the corners of the boule- 
vards ; art, sculpture, and regal appointments in the Louvre, 
the palaces, and the museums. There are one hundred and 
eighty or one hundred and twenty-eight fountains in the 
city of Paris, — I have really forgotten which, — and these 
are invariably accompanied by flowering trees, historic me- 
morials, and comfortable seats. All classes throng these 
open places and gardens, regardless of station.- There, in 
the garden of the Luxembourg, where once lingered 
Madame Roland by the side of the Girondists, in the daj^s 
of cabal and conspiracy, is one of the musty professors 
from the College de France, Ecole de Medecine, Palais des 
Beaux-Arts, Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, Amphitheatre 
d'Anatomie, or one of the many other magazines of lore 
with which this quarter is teeming, he is now shifted "the 
lean and slippered pantaloon," and though there is much 
in the busy life around him, he is absorbed in his little 
book, and does not heed and appears not to see, the pretty, 
liquid-ej^ed girls selling violets, the boys with their hoops, 
and tops, and skipping-ropes, — for childhood is childhood, 
in romantic, picturesque Paris, and indulges in the same 
sports as in artless Philadelphia, — nor truant scholars, and 
roisterers, linked arm-in-arm, airing their idle thoughts. 
He goes on reading his book and preparing his recitations. 
But to the gardens! Later in the day come the nurses 
and their charges ; the lofty dames from their Legitimistic 
homes, and the queens of the ambiguous circles, who ap- 
l)ear in order to fulfil their appointments. Here they 
mingle, and are permitted to follow the bent of their own 
impulses so long as they are decorous. With us it is not 
so; broad public acres and city squares, if not left to 
questionable classes, are not sought by the better orders, 
and even a visit to Fairmount Park should be properly 
made in a carriage. The one dismal feature of the nu- 
merous Paris pleasances is the dearth of sward. Other 
elements consi)ire to make them beautiful ; the gleam of 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. . 197 

statuary, the refreshing spray, the harmonious fall of foun- 
tains, and the luxuriance of foliage. But the French seem 
to regard grass-plots with antipathy, and prefer vast 
stretches of arid gravel. 

The restaurants and cafds are as interesting as the 
squares, and the life in them as varied. On the Rive 
Gauche the bouillis are an organized system, and tiieir pa- 
trons are the students, professors, and merchants doing 
business in the quartier. I believe they are considered the 
most remunerative class of restaurants; their prices are 
moderate, but their ceaseless support is a sure profit. The 
food is savory, be it, only boiled meat or broth. The French 
are the cooks par excellence of the world, and deserve the 
palm. I would never swear to what I was eating at a 
Parisian table. It is charmingly palatable, but there are 
none of the original characteristics of fish, flesh, or fowl 
left after the process of a French cuisine. Many and curi- 
ous are the anecdotes of chefs of the culinary kingdom. 
We read in history of a certain cook who hanged himself 
because one of the courses was not done at the proper hour 
for the royal board. After the fall of Napoleon, Monsieur 
Tery attended the allied monarchs at three thousand francs 
a daj^, and Louis Philippe's "Purveyor of Fish" received 
twenty-six thousand dollars per annum. 

If one wishes to dine with the uppertendom, one must 
needs repair to Yoisin's, Riche, Anglais, Maison Doree, or 
one of the epicurean palaces in the Palais Royal; Yery's, 
Yefour's, Trois Freres Provenceau. At each is a cosmo- 
politan throng, their respective nationalities distinguished 
at a glance. The slim, slippery old gentleman opposite, 
who is eating his dainties in selfish solitude, and sii)ping 
his champagne, pouring only enough into his glass at once 
for a single swallow, is an Englishman, and if I mistake 
not, he is also a scholar. Near him is a group of his coun- 
try people, ladies and gentlemen, of the predominent type; 
large, stalwart, sandy-haired men, "in fair, round belly 
with good capon lined," and robust women arrayed in un- 
complementary colors. There is nothing e[)hemeral about 
these ladies. At times they speak French, and at others 
English, all in a sweet voice, like the tones of a muflled 
silver bell, and although they are of the upper class their 
aphseresis and prosthesis with h are distinctly audible. 
Those two raw, crude boys, just of age, accompanied by 
their male chaperon of forty, are my Western brethren ; if 
any one should make inquiries regarding them I would be 

17* 



198 . PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

wicked enough to deny their nativity. The eldest is ardu- 
ously endeavoring to diffuse his whole body over the table, 
while the youths are importuning the gargon in very bois- 
terous fashion for roast chicken or lamb and plenty of it, 
and not these vol-au-venfs and champignons^ and delicate 
tidbits. Near by there is an exquisite young lady and her 
distinguished father. He is a Boston barrister, and these 
I am proud to claim as my compatriots. Her cultivation 
may be heard in her pure English accent, and her refined 
fostering in the harmony of her rich costume and polished 
manner. When she addresses the waiter it is in his own 
tongue, with nice emphasis, that emulates his own ; while 
chatting with her father there is a naive unconsciousness 
of self that is charming. The two young ladies with their 
dashing cavaliers over in the corner are descendants of 
Charlemagne, of course. Who would doubt it? To me 
tl»ere is somethins: far more allurino- about a Frenchwoman 
than my American or English sisters. They are a com- 
bination of grace and wit, that in other females would seem 
disreputable daring insouciance. They are enjoying all the 
daintiest morsels of the menu^ and demolishing copious 
draughts of Chateau Larose. 

In most of the French restaurants of the better order, 
and at the theatre-lobby bars, attractive girls are in attend- 
ance at the desks; hardened and polished b}' the steel and 
ice of flirtation, as beautiful as they are reckless, as dazzling 
as they are desperate. 

The Palais Royal, with its variety of expensive shops 
and palatial restaurants, is still a hot-bed of faro, though 
the very wealthy classes frequent the gambling clul)S on 
the boulevards. Most of the cafes have their gambling 
salons^ and it is a rare thing to pass in even the choicest 
of these restaurants, without the flash gentleman at the 
door interrogating ''* une cabinet particulierV There is 
no attempt to screen these vices. The}' are spread before 
the public in all their attractions. Gambling is legalized 
throughout the Continent, and encouraged by the Republic, 
while the favorite pastime of the plebeians is attending lot- 
teries, where millions are lost and only thousands won. 

These people have a way of giving proper names to their 
leading shops as we do to hotels, and many of them are 
supremel}' ridiculous. The " Bon Marche" is a reasonable 
appellation for the establishment it dignifies, as all the 
goods are moderate in price, and uj)on entering the shop 
one is incontinently enveloped in the essence of cheapness. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 199 

It is the first and last resort of Americans. " Old England" 
is a shop of homespun woollens and serges on the Bonle- 
varde des Italiens. Its name is compatible with its stock 
and attendants. It is chiefly valuable to English ladies 
going over to the Continent, as they may here secure a 
linen duster, an ugly plaid ulster, made of convict's mate- 
rial, and Turkish towelling, and green barege veiling to tie 
round their hats. Then the "Carnival of Venice," in 
which I can discover nothing consistent. The ''Good 
Devil," ah ! this to my woman's wit reveals its significance 
— there will be the devil of a row when the liill comes liome. 
The "Infant Jesus" baffles my powers of discernment, un- 
less through this omnipotent medium all blessings may be 
obtained. " The Great House of Peace," yes, here are 
unctions that physic all pains. But for me, " Les grandes 
Magasins du Louvre!" Here not onl}' all that adorns a 
woman, but all that beautifies her home is procurable, in 
the clioicest and most ravishing designs. 

What a contrast the Paris streets form to-day with their 
deplorable condition forty years ago! Then when the 
ladies went on the promenade they were obliged to escaj e 
dead cats and putrescent matter of divers species ; in many 
of the smaller byways the garbage floated in the middle <jf 
the street. Now they are swept and scoured into ullra- 
cleanliness. Walk where you will, the same universal purity 
is pre-eminent, even to the confines of the town at the Porte 
Maillot, where the octroi is collected from the vegetable and 
fruit vendors, bringing the produce of their little gardens 
be^'ond the bastions of the cit}', to flnd purchasers within. 

When one arrives in this dazzling metropolis, there is a 
supreme superficial glitter, that one believes may ver}^ soon 
be exhausted; but as we linger new and more profound 
attractions burst \\\)0\\ us. When we are sated by the parks 
and palaces, the operas and art galleries, the monuments 
and the museums, the flowers and fountains; then the great 
public works of education, charity, and civic government 
engage us even after these'social attractions are powerless. 
They have hospitals for the treatment of cutaneous diseases 
exclusively, as the Saint Louis, and the Hotel Dieu where 
all afflicted by contagious eruptions are denied admit- 
tance; Hopital du Midi, unexceptionally for males and their 
malades impropre ; the Plopital de Lourcine is the female 
branch of this peculiar charity; almshouses innurnerable 
for the old and the young, the halt and the blind, and a 
visit to the Hospice pour les infants traves, in the Rue 



k 



200 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

d'Enfer, creates a regret in one's heart for legitimate gamins 
who have no good nun to care for them, and are perliaps 
starving for bread and rolicking in defilement, while these 
little inconnus are nurtured with tenderness, and stimulated 
by purity. 



LETTER X LIII. 

" When, from the sacred garden driven, 
Man fled before his Maker's wrath. 
An angel left her place in Heaven, 

And crossed the wanderer's sunless path. 
'Tvvas Art ! sweet Art! new radiance broke 
Where her light foot flew o'er the ground. 
And thus with seraph voice she spoke : 
' The curse a blessing shall be found.' " 

Charles Spiiague. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

I HAVE visited the palaces clustered on the Ciiamps dc 
Mars, within shadow of the exquisite subuibs, — Passy and 
Lamuers, — and the Moresque Trocadero, crowning the his- 
torical heights of Chaillot, again and again in the hope of see- 
ing them in a state of completion, and I have half-fearfuliy 
souglit in their equipments splendor sur[)assing our display 
of 18*16. Surel}^ I have not found it upon the open terri- 
tory surrounding the buildings. While the esplanade is 
broad, and the grassy knolls and gay parterres bordering 
the main exposition hall are models of liarmony and 
grace, tliey have no fitting expanse. While the structures 
are spacious, there is a general appearance of crampedness 
prevailing throughout, and this feature is attributable to 
the absence of the vistas in which our glorious Centennial 
was so fortunate. 

In the main hall there are no series of long lines of per- 
spective stretching from end to end, sucli as gave our 
building its magnificent expressi<jn of distance. But I be- 
lieve the manner of dissecting streets and spaces by rigid 
plumb line is pre-eminently Philadelphian, and our adhe- 
rence to it has won for us the stigma of conoeyitionaliatf?. 
However, the jutting arms of sections, and the abrupt 
blockading of avenues in the French exhibition, have 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 201 

stripped the coup d^oeil of all the raagnitude of area and 
sj'mmetry of contour that we had so completely. 

Lengthy passages drawn out in seemingly endless ex- 
tension, serving as a telescope by which to anticipate dis- 
tant glories, are as a rule more appetizing than a dazzling 
constellation suddenl}^ thrust upon you after being obscured 
by a cloud of obstructions. We are more deeply impressed 
by a grandiose display of pyrotechnics, or a luminous me- 
teor that radiates the firmament from zenith to horizon 
with empyrean effulgence, than by a series of Roman-can- 
dle explosions or a succession of ignes fatui. So in the 
interior construction of the French exhibition the tout en- 
semble of the display' is much depreciated, at least to my 
eyes. 

The British department exhibits more geometry in the 
division of its aisles and the distribution of its cases 
than any of the other sections, and here I have experienced 
more real pleasure than even in our American section. 
Not onl}^ have the English been most vigilant in the recti- 
linear system of the arrangement, but the cases are all so 
built as to add to the value of their contents. 

The buildings themselves are more ornate and artistic 
than ours of 18*76. The prodigality of gay Gallic colors 
and decorations is very effective. But the whole exposi- 
tion is as pallid in contrast with tlie Centennial as tlie 
sweet light of the moon — outdazzled by the lusty exuber- 
ance of the noonday sun. 

In passing from gallery to gallery the rude, brilliant 
frescoes adorning the fagades impart to the scene an Ori- 
ental glow. Once upon the avenue intersecting the main 
hall with its bulwark of national architecture, and its 
many detachments for the reception of beaux-arts^ the eye 
is gratified by an infinity of bizarre and entrancing effects. 
Perhaps it is the rare combination of sui gene7Hs edifices, 
domed and shady palisades draped by antique tapestry, or 
crimson and golden Moorish arras intervening and throw- 
ing into bolder relief the opposite method of national 
erection; or perhaps the many curious foreign representa- 
tives, in their variegated costumes and the Babel of mixed 
vernaculars, that produce these effects ; but they are very 
novel. 

Passing between the art gallery and these types of uni- 
versal national S3^mbols, where the minarets and cupolas 
of the Mahometan, the lacy fretwork of the Swiss chalet^ 
the dismal, austere model of early English, the ease and 



202 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

elegance of modern French and Italian, and the flaunting, 
yet practical, red brick of American architecture, are 
blended into one panorama of harmonious variet}'^, we came 
upon the Prince of Wales's pavilion. Possessing a testi- 
monial of admittance from Governor McCormick, the door 
was opened instantl}^, and the favor denied to many was 
granted unto us. The Prince and his royal spouse were 
not at home, so the attendant said, but were expected during 
the afternoon, to remain overnight in their miniature pal- 
ace on the Champs de Mars, so we were allowed to roam 
over the apartments at will. Through a broad, tessellated 
corridor, flanked by small antechaml>ers, we directly en- 
tered the dining-hall, where the table was alread}'^ laid for 
its princely guests, though the day was young. A long 
table it was, with places laid for twelve. Though the linen 
was the heaviest and softest, and shone with the lustre of 
satin, there were no embroidery nor crestings. Though the 
glassware was the purest and most sparkling crystal, the 
brilliancy was unmarred by intricate wreaths of engraving. 
They were undefiled by the stylus of the artisan, with the 
exception of a modest armorial device, encircled by a deli- 
cate garland of immortelles. An embossed gold flower-urn 
and corresponding candelabras furnished the centre, while 
about the sides and corners of the table a golden dinner- 
service, elaborately wrought in curious designs of y^epounse 
and frosted-workmanship, was spread, ready to receiv^e the 
viands of the sybaritic feast. The four walls were hung 
with tapestries made at the Queen's castle in the little 
town of Windsor, and the representations from the scenes 
in Shakespeare's " Merry Wives." These are the present 
theme of fashionable criticism in society and the papers. 
From the ponderous and pompous upholstering and gold 
plate of the salle a manger to the fair}'' brilliancy of the 
Princess's boudoir was, indeed, a transformation scene in 
a holiday pantomime. All that the adjacent chamber con- 
tained of the oppressive sumptuousness this one had in the 
delicate splendor of blue and gilt appointments. In a side 
alcove there was built an artificial grotto, where the waters 
of a fountain fall in melodious tinkle upon the exotics, 
whose bronze foliage acted as a foil to the stony scintilla- 
tions of gods and goddesses it struggled to hide, and con- 
trasted vividly with the confused tones — brickdust and 
saffron — of the majolica vases. Farther on we came to 
dressing-rooms and business bui-eaus, all characterized by 
a lavish expenditure in English and French luxuries. The 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 203 

exlravagfince of princes was forcibly portrayed in the mar- 
quetrie mantels and doors, fashioned in the rarest designs 
from the woods of India — costly additions, that may be 
useless in a few months, when the pavilion is razed. 

Continuing down this avenue we emerge into tiie broad 
esplanade of the main hall which strikes me as being much 
handsomer than our hall in Fairmount Park. The building 
of itself is a mere shell, but so richly is it colored and col- 
umned, so radiant with stained glass windows, so to speak, 
forming the upper two-thirds of the fagade^ that I felt its 
influence long afterwards. I hear it nevertheless denounced 
as tawdry^ with its crude and show}'- colossal statues resting 
against ostentatious pillars far above whose heads float 
tlieir banners and pennons ; but I did not agree with the 
A^erdict. A sloping sward closely shaven, planted with 
flowering plots and freshened by fountains, gravitates to a 
microcosm of restaurants, kiosks, and foreign bureaus. 
Through the entrance of the Quai d^Orsay^ guarded by its 
gigantic bronzes, you rest upon the Pont de Jena, to watch 
the little steamers puflfing to and fro on the placid Seine, 
some conveying a freight of visitors to the Exhibition 
Palaces, and others moored to the stone wharves, depositing 
their stores of stone and wood, to complete the temples of 
art, science, and industry. Many aquatic sportsmen in otiose 
mood are pulling themselves in little canoes over the still 
and silent stream, while other riotous parties of bacchantes 
are filling the air with shout and jest. Upon the bridge 
are the votaries of fashion and frolic, who have come to see 
and be seen ; the artist with palette and brush, and the 
architect inspecting with critical eye every curve and capi- 
tal, base and bend, that make up the colonnades of the 
Trocadero; the correspondent who is interviewing the in- 
tegral parts of the picture en masse and jotting down airy 
nothing from which he will weave several columns of the 
most substantial material; the fair round churchman with 
missal and rosar3', adding savor, as it were, to this human 
olla podrida. 

To view the Trocadero from the base of the mound is 
scarcely satisfactory. In this position an accurate pros- 
pect of the whole may be obtained, but to enjoy and study 
the building proper, one must linger about the parc^ take 
a seat at one of the little cafe tables so numerous in the 
grounds, and wdiile lunching, dwell upon this vast loadstar 
enthroned upon the verdured summit which a century ago 
was destined as the site of the reoral home of the future 



204 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS "^ 

King of Rome. Mark well its many attractive points. It 
is a vast semicircular edifice; a huge rotunda forming the 
centre, flanked by square wings with lofty towers, and pro- 
jecting from these wings, extending from the northeast to 
the southwest, are sky-lighted galleries modelled after the 
peristyles of Campanian towns. This canopied and colon- 
naded promenade stretches from one extremity to the other 
of the palace with the Spanish name, encompassing the 
music hall, and connecting at each of the open vestibules 
of the wings, and reached b}^ spacious stone stairways, or, 
as a correspondent calls them, stoops from the several 
footpath?!. There is no sterility of decoration, as flags float 
in an endless array of colors along the margins of the roofs, 
and statues perfect each pilaster of the superb colonnade. 
Issuing from the centre of this building, and as if rushing 
from the columns, is a cascade of foaming water, that takes 
one plunge to the ground level, and then over a series of 
gravitating steps until it drifts into the great circular 
basin; through this volume of crested foam ^e^s d^eaux 
eject their spray aloft, and fountains at opposite angles 
cast their waters to each other in playful motion. The 
beds of tulips and early spring flowers are more beautiful 
by their slight inclination toward the horizon, nestling 
upon the gentle acclivity, and the four great brazen beasts 
— the horse, the bull, the elephant, and rhinoceros — at the 
corners of the basin, though magnificent works of art, 
seem sadly inharmonious. However, they contribute to- 
ward a construction that is most fantastic and unconven- 
tional, from the Alpha to the Omega. 

The Chaillot Heights, like many of the Parisian suburbs 
were discovered to be thoroughly alveolated by ancient 
quarries, rendering it absolutel3'^ necessary to form a new 
and solid foundation for the Palais du Trocadero, but from 
this circular condition of the hillside, the curious fresh- 
water aquarium sprang. These aquaria are formed b}'- the 
natural old quarry cavities, and though presenting the ap- 
pearance of a succession of small ponds upon the grounds, 
the water descends gently through the ichthyological re- 
treats. 

When the interior of the Trocadero is quite completed, 
the long wings will be the depository of art, while the 
rotunda will be the hall of festas and ceremonials. When 
I first looked upon the disordered mass, I scarcely hoped 
to see it in its present glorious state, but the French seem 
to economize time and weather; they level streets in a night 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 205 

and compass impossibilities in a day. It is a modern ver- 
sion of Aladdin's lamp and the Prince's palace. And it is 
ever the one stor}'-, either in work or in war; they overrun 
kingdoms and establish republics as rapidly as they forget 
their beloved dead and forgive the tyrannical living. 

To-day the Exposition is a flower and poem, and though 
I recall the emotions incited by the Centennial in these 
Paris parterres and palaces spread over the Champs de 
Mars and hills of Passy, never again can I thrill with the 
feelings that made me at once so proud and so happy at 
the celebration of my country's enfranchisement. 



LETTER XLIT. 

"Turn to the world — its curious dwellers view, 
Like Paul's Athenians, seeking something new. 
Be it a bonfire's or a city's. blaze. 
The gibbet's victim, or the nation's ga^e, 
A female atheist, or a learned dog, 
A monstrous pumpkin, or a mammoth hog, 
A murder, or a muster, 'tis the same, 
Life's follies, glories, griefs, all feed the flame." 

Charles S^kague. 

Paris, May, 1878. 

To chronicle the Exhibition Universelle in detail would 
be the wildest sort of enterprise; still I must record some 
contrasts and comparisons that made the most impression 
on me before I say good-bye. 

But how to begin and where? At the American section, 
that is closest my heart, or at the English, French, or 
Italian, that please my eye? From tl^e chief exhibition 
entrance, the sea of glory opens with the Indian presents 
of the Prince of Wales. They glitter under the rich can- 
opy of Oriental design and coloring, called the "India 
House." To enumerate the jewelled swords, snufl'-boxes, 
medals, royal decorations, shawls, and laces, duplicated 
again and again, would craze a mathematician. The deeper 
l^hilosophy taught by all this superabundance of useless 
gifts is the obeisance equally of the commoners and the 
nobility to the crown. All day throngs cluster about 
these India cases, to count over and memorize the honors 
IS 



206 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

bestowed upon the Prince, so that they may tell them to 
others. I join the ocean of humanit}', but only to admire 
and study these sinfully costly gewgaws, just as I linger at 
the ceramic display of the Minton and Doulton clays, the 
Copeland and Worcester Parian, the Chelsea porcelain, 
and the Wedgwood Jasper. Royalty has its uses in the 
encouragement of genius, and the distribution of the an- 
tique models; but it is painful to see how many millions 
are given to feed the overfed kings of the world, and to 
decorate those who are already overweighted with their 
chains of gold. I believe it is generally conceded that the 
present exhibition of the products of the British potteries 
outdazzles their specimens at the Centennial display in 1876. 
It seems only reasonable that it should, in consideration 
of the difficulties of the voyage, but it does not strike me 
so. Perhaps I am a patriotic bigot who sees all copies of 
our national display only to their disparagement, but I 
never can repeat the first joy of our own universal Ameri- 
can banquet. This is the national excuse for depreciation ; 
if so, it is the familiar simile of the little child with the 
gingerbread horse, the sense of first pleasure lasts through 
the after years. I still taste that earl}^ gingercake. There 
is nothing to take the place of the Centennial. 

Bronzes, tapestries, statuary, and pictures are sources 
of endless enjoyment at a great fair. Among the most 
bizarre gems of the English pottery department were the 
Greek vases in imitation of red granite, from the factories 
of Wedgwood & Sons, at Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, Staf- 
fordshire. 1 bent long over a choice collection of clocks, 
time-pieces, etc., adorned with original plaques of faience, 
from James Howell, Regent Street, London. Fascinating 
as many of the modern services are, the most persistent 
efforts seem to be lavished upon certain panels. These 
are entrancing beyond description. Many sacred subjects, 
representations from the early Greek and Roman epics, 
and themes of feudal troubadours, are faithful, with a deli- 
cacy of pigment and exactness of outline that are the per- 
fection of ceramic art. "The Infant Saviour in the arms 
of Simeon," "Gethsemane," "The Walk from Emmaus," 
"The Resurrection," "Elaine," and many other equally 
familiar objects, are treated with almost articulate pathos. 

Staffordshire is, so to speak, a priceless mine of clay 
fields, as one soon learns by walking through the Paris 
Exposition. It is almost visiting the district of the "Pot- 
teries," which extends along the course of the Trent, where 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 20t 

the only occupation of the population is the manufacture 
of this precious earthenware, and though Burslem sends 
many fine productions, Stoke-upon-Trent, a town of lesser 
inhaljitants, and two hundred factories, transmits the lion's 
share. Have we not in our country the same earths, and 
the same sl^ill to mix, mould, and poetize them? 

I noticed a case of exquisite ladies' shoes, bearing a close 
similitude to the same with which our English friends 
favored the Centennial; surely no French cordonnier ever 
infused greater finish and delicacy into his inspiration, yet 
the English are the illest-shod females on the two hemi- 
spheres. They invent exquisite shoes, but have few feet 
among their own people to fit them. 

The cutlery of Sheffield and Birmingham can no longer 
claim a place alone, no more can the Manciiester prints, 
since our Yankee steel and cotton are sold upon English 
counters; anotiier disenchantment began at the Centennial 
and repeated in Paris. It is upon this platform that tlie 
United States stands pre-eminent. I find here other facts 
for thought. Our agricultural and steam-propelling ma- 
chines, our pianos, and sewing machines, are everywhere 
unsurpassed, and let it be said our exhibits of this kind 
were not onl}'" creditable to our inventors, but to our taste 
in the useful arts. This last feature is also noticeable in 
our surgical and dental instruments, our carriages, and the 
exquisite gold and silverware of Tiffany. But, where was 
the great ''Corliss" that impelled our country's industrial 
and mechanical representatives? How [ missed the colos- 
sus. It would have made the Frenchmen stare, and com- 
pensated for other deficiences. 

The Japanese and Chinese departments are interesting, 
as these almond-eyed people ever are in all their enter- 
prises. But there is a sweet familiarity about all that I 
see. The carved ivory beds and painted silk canopies are 
just as wonderful if not quite as fresh as when I saw them 
in Philadelphia. Still even those Americans who are so 
indignant because we are not strong enough in the Ameri- 
can department in Paris, and scold Congress for not giving 
Governor McCormick half a million to make a respectable 
show in this great world's carnival and jewel-house, — even 
these take comfort because the Japanese showed their most 
lovely productions first to the world through our spectacles 
in Fairmount Park. The Centennial is a great comforter, 
I assure 3'ou, away over here. 

The crown jewels of Great Britain have been convej^ed 



208 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Inther from the Tower, and here is a splendid treat for the 
French masses that we were unable to offer in Philadelphia. 
After that, very naturally, I strayed into the jewel depart- 
ment of the French section, and found this part of the 
pageant sparkling with diamonds and gold far beyond con- 
ception. I wish I had the ability to paint this dazzling 
scene. It is so, indeed, that a great gem is never lost! 
It may be stolen, but all the thieves feel a special property 
in its preservation. It cannot be imitated, and so carries 
lis own protection in its scarcity. A great jewel is like 
the special discovery of an island, once found all are 
solicitous to keep it, and a continent cannot be counter- 
feited. The Russian jewel department, though perhaps 
not finer than in 1876, is more extensive. It embraces a 
wider sphere of female decorations, and the Russian man- 
ner of giving tone and color to gold is wholly unique. A 
medallion has upon its upper face the protoplast of a pear 
and the leaves; tlie fruit is a fac simile pearl of a delicate 
pink and yellow shade; the leaves are of the metal, pre- 
sented in frostwork, combining the green, yellow, russet, 
and brown of autumnal tints. Ear-drops, symbolical of 
fuchsias, of this same colored gold, having tlie petals tipped 
sometimes with coral and sometimes with pearls; orna- 
ments figurative of the rose, shaded from pale-saffron to 
pink, are only the more simple of these elegant designs. 
The Muscovite is master in his own school of art, and is 
strong in his silver and malachite conceits, even be3'ond 
the French. 

In the French annex of Indies' costumes we find the 
grandest achievements of Worth's and Pingat's skill. Here 
are dresses that would create an insurrection if carried into 
a Philadelphia saloon. I will not attempt to sketch these 
fantastic anatomies. But then their vagaries were pro- 
duced to glorify the inventor's name, and though they are 
the excessive poetry of female attire, it is doubtful if they 
will remunerate the contriver. 

An English lady of considerable cultivation insists that 
the display of statuary falls in point of merit far beneath 
our collection in 1876, and not only so, but declares that 
after visiting all the important galleries of Europe she 
found none so rich en masse as that gathered into our art 
aggregation in Fairmount Park. I listened but was not 
convinced, and so took her compliment in silent surprise. 
To compare our Exhibition, even with all that was loaned 
from abroad, to the depositories of ancient art, is scarcely 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 209 

just. One is the schoolroom of present study, the other 
the tera|)le of bygone splendor. We do not look for a 
Phidias, a Praxiteles, a Milo, or Marble Faun. These are 
the uncontested and often unknown masters. I see much 
that pleases me, not so much it is true as I saw at home, 
but then I look tli rough my patriotic glasses, and I cannot 
forget original tastes, as I said. 

The French disciples of the brush are all here, in the 
Beaux Arts, in holiday regalia; Jules Breton, in his real- 
istic pencillings of peasant life; Diaz in forest scenes, 
where the mellow yet brilliant blending of tones is his chief 
merit; Bouguereau in saintly portrayals; and Messonier 
in his characteristic little gems. J hear that quite a num- 
ber of Corots are yet to be bung, but there is some discus- 
sion about giving them a place, and I shall have bidden 
adieu to sweet Paris before the issue can be settled. Many 
of our old Centennial pictures smile on me a homelike wel- 
come, and among these Frith's Railroad Station and Queen 
Victoria's Marriage. 

In my saunterings, this thought comes: Human intellect 
is undoubtedly more worshipi)ed and has better chances in 
France than in England; and there is no more patent dis- 
play of this fact than in this French Exposition. In Great 
Britain there is still a large royal family, with only their 
azure blood to consecrate their titles, and there a higher 
court must be paid to those whose crowns are worn on 
their heads than to those whose great thoughts are the 
gold and jewels hidden in the casket of the brain. The 
mere snob gives his homage to the sovereign invented by 
law, but is quite as likely to sneer at the French monarchs 
of the mind, Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo, Emile de Girardin, 
and Laboulaye; he never heard or cared to hear of the 
dead kings of literature and art, Chateaubriand, Scarron, 
Guizot, Thiers, Voltaire, Moliere, Racine, and Sismondi; 
but this noble show is suggestive of them all, the dead and 
the living. The face of the Prince of Wales has very much 
the appearance of a jolly country squire, with his bold fore- 
head and Hanoverian cast of countenance. The old King 
of Spain looks like a faded roue. The Princess of Wales 
has a plain, refined face, but void of beauty, and a hundred 
others of these people ma}^ be classed in the same category. 
But there is a presence about Gambetta, with his one 63^6, 
that gives him the look of a fierce Cyclops; Girardin seems 
a polished courtier of seventy, in whose face reason holds 
the highest throne; Edmund About, a bronze giant; La- 

18* 



210 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

boiilaye, the statesman and the philosopher; and Victor 
Hugo, an inspired Dervish. I do not know anybody in 
the Royal House of England that ever showed any special 
brains; none of tlie Princes or Princesses; while over here 
in France the Orleans and Bourbon pretenders are some 
of them very able men. Most of the great writers, artists, 
painters, and sculptors, are Republicans, and have been for 
years, long before the fall of the last Empire. Most of the 
philosophers and scientists are on the same side. Of course 
tiiere are plenty of other men against the Republic, and for 
reaction; but 1 look in vain for a man on the Rei)ul)lican 
side in England who has an}'' special status as a great poet, 
painter, sculptor, s{)eaker, or essayist. The best Republi- 
can in that great country is a woman, and lier name is 
Georije Eliot, 



LETTER XLV. 

"In orange-groves and myrtle bowers, 

1 hat breathe a gale of fragrance round, 
I charm the fairy-footed hours 

With my loved lute's romantic sound ; 
Or crowns of living laurel weave 
For those that run tlie race at eve." 

Rogers. 

Lyons, May, 1878. 

Never was Paris more glorious than when I passed 
through its shining boulevards and open squares toward 
the Embarcadere de Lyon yesterday. The spires and 
domes of the marvellous city were sparkling in the sun- 
light, the flowers blooming at the corners, and the Tricolor 
of France and the Stars and Stripes of her sister republic, 
America, blending and floating in the breeze. Perhaps it 
was this sweet fraternity, and perhaps my own affection 
for home, that caused the ineffable sadness at my heart as 
I rode away. There has been an essence of home about 
this place ever since I came into it one shining Sabbath 
four weeks ago. Peradventure, you may say, 1 loved it 
because it is gay and dazzling, because 1 caught all the 
smiles and none of the sighs, because I had seen only the 
beautiful and none of the bestial, because I was thoughtful 
only of the charms and thoughtless of the crosses ; or, it 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 211 

may be, yon will say that I revelled in the wild enchant- 
ment, and had no conception of its sins and its sorrows. 
Bnt eager as I am lor fresh territories, the regret at leaving 
this sweet foreign habitation, as I had grown to regard it, 
was quite sincere. 

As 1 passed the cabarets^ hotels, and shops I met occa- 
sionally Italian, English, and even German flags, but 
French and American constantly. We were passing 
through the Pays Latin ^ where liberty is dearly cherished, 
and these twin republican symbols were far more frequent 
than on the opposite border of the Seine amongst the rep- 
resentatives of the ancient regime. 

Numbers of students were clustered about the libraries 
that flank the Seine in this i)ortion of the cit}', where 
books by famous authors, of whom I never heard, may be 
purchased from two sous to a Louis d'or. 

As we drew near the depot, upon the confines of Bercy, 
we found the streets straggling, and the workmen in their 
blouses; now and then one in sabots would clatter over the 
stones, a fruit-seller or flower-girl in blue petticoat and 
white coiffe^ and arms as bare and as brown as polished 
porphyry, crossed the white streets that increase in dazzling 
lustre, with their little stores upon their heads from their 
homes about Charenton beyond the bastions; great logs 
and rafts were drifting in the silent flow of the river, or 
heaped upon the stone quays. Everywhere there was con- 
tent and thrift, but none of the glitter and crush of tiie 
city. We had already crossed the threshold of the Palace 
of Enchantment. 

We took tickets for Lyons, a ride of nine and a quarter 
hours through the Burgundy vineyards of France. It 
seemed like a long ride, but I knew it would not prove 
tedious, lying through this golden district, that i)resented 
a new and entrancing picture at each step; but I was not 
prepared for the burst of glory that greeted me upon leav- 
ing Paris, and did not desert me until night came and hid 
it from m}^ ardent gaze 

We rapidly penetrated into the richest sections of France, 
though not the most picturesque; for it had none of the 
wild romance of rugged mountains, sharp defiles, dark 
gorges, and foaming waters ; but all the calm, domestic 
beauty of rich farmlands, cultivated hillsides, and happy 
homes. I met with no starvation and squalor; all was 
peaceful and flourishing, and all were at work; no one de- 
spised or scorned labor, and therefore all were prosperous. 



212 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

This absence of the woes of intemperance is tlie prevail- 
ing characteristic of tlie Valley of tiie Marne, that stretches 
far away to the left, in one unbroken plain of fertility. 
After crossing the waters from which this luxuriant region 
derives its name, near their confluence with the Seine, 
guarded on tiie west i)y Fort Ivr^^, and the east b}^ Char- 
enton, our companionship with it ceased, and through 
Seine et Marne, along the green slopes of the Yeres, a 
territory of verdure-clad hills, we saw here and there an 
artistic dwelling set down in a dale of flowers, and the 
smoke from thriving mills curling over the landscape. 

Entering the forest of Fontainebleau the trees seenl as 
if they had been uprooted and replaced in long straight 
lines by a surveyor. The vegetable gardens are rich in 
produce for the great cit}''. We have already passed many 
white-stone quarries, the wealth of which is so extensively 
utilized in the noble edifices we have left behind us — per- 
haps forever. I had believed the glistening Paris houses 
to be composite, and a portion of the city certainly is, but 
here before me and around me are vast blocks of creamy 
stone, newly cut from chalky beds beyond. These deposits 
lie close along the railway, and laborers are busy digging 
and hewing the material for builders. 

And now there are vines everywhere; they are drawn 
out far ahead as a wayside border of our route. The 
grapes are grown upon the terraced hillsides, and trained 
to little sticks not more than two feet high, and women are 
to be seen everywhere upon the blooming acclivities tend- 
ing their crops for the approaching vintage. Where are 
the men? I involuntarily ask; the women are doing all the 
drudgery. One fertile valley succeeds another, and another, 
and another, until I am prone to believe there is not an 
acre of Yonne and the Cote d^or which is not devoted to 
the grape and the olive. Behind the hillocks are plateaux 
of sward and neat little cottages ; tall poplars shorn of 
foliage, until the eff"ect is that of a forest of flagstaff's or 
telegraph poles, one of the principal features of the French 
landscape. Hamlets as white as a seagull's wing are 
couched against gentle inclinations, and feudal chateaux 
and abbeys crown the summits, where many a revel, and 
many a secret, and many an exile were hidden in the long 
ago, when convent was only a euphuism for carousal, and 
chateau for confinement. The turrets and the spires gleam 
still and solemn against the intensely blue sky, the land is 
as full of mediaeval history as of present prosperity; per- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 213 

haps when it rang with wilder revelry, more triumphant 
victories, and the glory of greater names, it felt the lash 
of a more tyrannical rule. 

As we neared Dijon our line lay through a series of tun- 
nels, cuttings, and viaducts, and as we emerged the dusky 
gray of the olive was seen in more frequent patches of light, 
to which the vine-clad hills served as a background. Here 
and there in vales to our right we saw the golden glisten 
of orange groves between the glossy foliage; and I realized 
that I was in a strange country. Ruins, pointing out the 
spots where time has placed his despoiling finger, were crum- 
l)lino: around wliere feudal sovereis^ns dwelt and died. Ah! 
yes, the Cote d'or is very beautiful and luscious in its green 
and purple robes, and delights the eye as much as it grati- 
fies the palate. 

The peasants were clustered in little groups at the 
stations, and in the white roads sparkling with silica they 
looked like moving bouquets of ruddy autumn dahlias. 
Their costumes were modelled after the picturesque Swiss 
type, doubtless the dress of their alpine neighbors. These 
fair maids of France do not fulfil the fair conception we 
had formed of them from romances and traveller's tales. 
They are almost unexceptionably dwarfed and ungraceful; 
but a better educational system seems now to prevail iu 
these districts of France. The daugliters of the vintage- 
owners assist in the cultivation of the vine, and no part of 
mental discipline is neglected to render them proficient. 
Those we met were merry ; not intoxicated b}^ the juice of 
the grapes, but drunk with the delight of their new liberty. 

We were very near to Haute-Sa6ne, and the magnificent 
forests, with their caverns of coal and iron, branching off 
from the Vosges, close in the valley like great walls of pine 
and poplar. 

It was 4.30 or 5 p.m. when we stopped at Dijon, and with 
all the transcendent glory of the Burgundian hillsides, the 
prosaic name of dinner was not unwelcome. Nothing could 
be more delightful than the viands spread before us at the 
station buflfet, the wine of the vicinage included, for four 
francs. A dinner of seven courses, comprising a delicious 
soup, fish, roast beef, vegetables, spring chicken and let- 
tuce, compote, pudding, fruits, nuts, cheese, and coffee, had 
the effect of returning the passengers to the train in the 
most vivacious mood. 

Dijon is a zigzag old town, at the confluence of the 
Ouche and the Souzon, of about 40,000 inhabitants. In 



214 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

earlier dnys, when France was under the dominion of a 
number of petty feudal officers, it was the capital of Bur- 
gundy, and the home of the reigning dnke until the six- 
teenth century. Now, shining under the sun of the allodial 
system, we find it the metropolis of the department of the 
Cote d'or and the heart of the wine trade. A friend told 
me I had lost much by not remaining overnight and dip- 
ping into the cm ious sights and customs of this provincial 
town, such as I shall never enjoy by visiting only large 
cities. Being anxious to sleep in Lyons, womanlike, I 
follow the dictates of my own desire, and drive on to my 
intended destination. 

Then, as we whirled through soft, green valleys, from 
which tlie fruit-burdened hills diverge on every side, and 
crossed crystal streams whose meagre waters ripple over 
stony beds, where women sit at the margin dipping their 
linen in the lucid current and beating it on the stones; on 
the white roads, winding around the acclivities into the 
dales, and ascending the dark mountain arms in the far 
distance again, we saw the grape-wagons drawn by oxen 
clumsily yet ga3iy caparisoned, and heard the silver tinkle 
of their bells vibrating through the sweet evening; the sun 
tiirew his last warm radiance over the earth, and the volup- 
tuous hush of eventide was made musical by the dreamy 
jingling chimes of convent towers. 

Now we were in the heart of Haute Bourgogne, and we 
bade adieu to the famous vineyards of the Clos Yougeot, 
only to greet those of Gevrey, and lose sight of the yellow 
and purple heights of Nuits, V^olney, or Pomard, to gain 
the prospect of the slopes of Beaune. 

Yes! Night with her owls and bats and starry veil had 
come to dwell with us. The coach-lamps were lighted, 
closing all communication with the outer world, and I 
essayed to read my novel. With the dying gleam of day 
I saw the misty shadows of the Jura in the east, and my 
guide tells me in clear weather the icy iridescence of Mont 
Blanc is perceptible. 

When 1 emerged from the courtyard into the Rue Belle- 
cour this "morning, with my first sight of the ramparts or 
sectional heights of the city of Lyons I wished for the 
power of a Millet or a Daubigny. It combines all the va- 
riet3^ and fascination of pastoral and metropolitan beauty. 
Before me mounted ridge above ridge of garlanded heights, 
and rows of tall houses distinctly visible border the rocky 
ledges. I wanted to ascend the fortifications, but how? 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 215 

Behind me lay the tongue of the city lapped by the Rhone 
and Saone, and I turned to the shops and City Hall through 
the new and beautiful Place de Bellecour. Not so many, 
it is true, but all around me are shops and streets as beau- 
tiful as those of the feverish capital. Not such an endless 
display of silks and velvets as I anticipated ; black laces 
and fine linens are conspicuous, as though envious of the 
silkworm's reputation. After tiring of the municipal sights, 
I engaged cocher to open unto me the rural splendor of 
the Pare de la Tete d'Or, for this community, though 
scarcely more than a third as large as Philadelphia, must 
have their Fairmount Park on the left of the Rhone. 
Starting from the converging point of the two streams, all 
along the quays on either side are the floating laundries, 
where the washerwomen come to perform their duties, 
which seem to be the cliief soui'ce of emolument amongst 
the lower classes. The boulevard leading to the Pare js 
dry and level, planted on either margin with prolific shade 
trees, and the river is spanned by frequent bridges. One 
of the great charms of these foreign cities are the rivers 
that glide through the centre, with their handsome embank- 
ments and white-stone wharves. 

In the park we find the Zoological and Botanical gardens, 
a lake where little skiffs are dancing, vast parterres of gay 
flowers, cultivated by the husbandmen, and a vacherie 
where fresh milk is offered to the pleasure-seekers. To 
our right a great checkered counterpane of yellow and 
pink and white and green appears to have been spread. 
As we approach this gaudy coverlet we find it woven of 
tall, graceful, waving grain, drooping its golden head as if 
in modest sense of its mature wealth, blended with patches 
of pink and white clover, and young crisp verdure. 

Toward the silk factories, traversing the heights of Croix- 
Rousse, we ascended in an infractuous coil, that often proved 
an arduous pull to our poor old horse. The inclinations 
are dangerous, the streets narrow, the houses rearing to 
the height of six and seven stories, and permeating the 
atmosphere are the moisture of steam and the whirr of 
looms. The diminutive stature and hunted faces of the 
silk-weavers are visible, a cogent proof of the seditious 
sentiments of this sinuous section. I may call almost 
every house a silk factory, as manufacturers furnish the 
raw material to the laborers and they transform it into 
sheeny fabric in their homes. 

Mounting ten or twelve pairs of steep steps through 



216 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

ding}?^ corridors and dismal chambers, we reached one of 
the leading establishments ; a large room filled with looms, 
of which only a few were in active operation, and we hear 
the murmer of "hard times." The looms that were in 
motion contained the warp of gold and white damask 
ordered by President MacMahon to upholster a new suit 
of furniture. The proprietor of this great establishment 
escorted us to a room adorned with silk pictures, the pro- 
ducts of the Jacquard looms ; — "he and his family received 
by the Emperor and Empress," " Washington," "Lincoln," 
and many illustrative of French history, all capital por- 
traits. We disdained offering a fee to this pompous silk 
man, who had been in the presence of royalty, believing 
profuse thanks to be our only mode of grateful demon- 
stration. I summoned my entire vocabulary of French 
courtes}" and lavished it upon him ; but even this did not 
appease the old vampire's cringing soul. He beckoned us 
into a small room, and I, believing he was about to reward 
my ultra civility by a display of further glories, thanked 
him again and again. At length I yielded to his impor- 
tunities, and there scattered over a table were a shoal of 
other woven adornments. I expressed my admiration for 
the wonderful work in my strongest language, and still 
not a glimmer of the old man's design dawned upon me 
until he enumerated the prices of them. Then, and then 
only, the sun of Wisdom broke through my cloudy percep- 
tion in a perfect exuberance of light. I comprehended 
the situation ; I was the fly in the spider's web, and my 
escape could only be purchased b3^ the price of several of 
these pictures, the cheapest valued at ten francs! So 
through life one must pay for his ignorance, and though 
the school of experience exacts the most bitter lessons, 
the}^ are always the most chastening and enduring. 

Lyons presents no appearance of neglect. Its streets 
are new, its squares adorned with statues, its gardens and 
plots carefully planted ; yet there is ever apparent a sim- 
mering insurrection, that with a breath may be fanned into 
a broil. It is more the city of successful manufactures 
and weary proletaires, than of costly pleasures. It is a 
community of toilers and merchants, not poets and states- 
men. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 211 



LETTER XLVI. 

*' The cheapness of wine seems to be a great cause, not of drunken- 
ness, but of sobriety. The inhabitants of the wine countries are in 
general the soberest people of Europe ; witness the Spaniards, the 
Italians, and the inhabitants of the Southern provinces of France." 

Smith. Wealth of Nations. 

"And sound again, bold Melody, 
For baffled millions raise 
The last victorious rallying cry, 
The nation's Marseillaise. 
Once more advance in the vanguard, France, 
To the roar of the Marseillaise !" 

Marseilles, May, 1878. 

When I rode away from Lyons I was convinced tliat 
excellent cooking was not confined to the gilded Capital. 
The dinners — vin ordinaire inclusive — were poems, and I 
freely confess the chief charm of a foreign hotel to voyagers 
is an unexceptionable cuisine. 

From Lyons to Marseilles our route lay through that 
portion of Transalpine Gaul, rich in the luscious warmth 
of the grape, the golden glow of the orange, the hectic 
flush of the poppy, all lending an Oriental hue to the pic- 
ture that was tempered into harmony by the puritanical 
robelS of the dusk}^ olive; and sumptuous in its numberless 
relics of Roman occupation. The authenticity of many of 
these remains and their accompanying legends is un- 
doubted, as the Romans conquered and held tenure in 
Gaul, which they in those early days overran and appropri- 
ated, as they did the other kingdoms of Europe. They 
sequestered their Caesars as the Bonapartes did in later 
times. This immortal garland of history has encouraged 
romancists to weave many wayside weeds and spurious 
reminiscences into their fanciful wreaths. As we passed 
over the Alpine ledges, and through the granite excava- 
tions, and by the numerous arrowy streams, tributaries of 
the Rhone and fed by mountain springs, not only each 
city and town, but almost every village deserves a special 
record. Here are vineyards 3^ielding the same delicious 
"Hermitage" through all these centuries, from the little 
slips of vine planted between the interstices of rock by 
the recluse who made his retreat upon the hill, to the hire- 
ling of the local duke who inserted saplings that have been 
the favorite cup of the castle. This exquisite product of 
19 



218 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

white and red wine scarcely ever passes out of France ; at 
least none of the first quality. It is monopolized by the 
millionaires and native roj^alists, and when exported the 
lower grades are invoiced as the prime original. Before 
touching the conical declivity of the Hermitage, we had 
passed the Chateau de Ponsas on the right bank of the 
Rhone, and in the distance we caught a glimpse of moun- 
tain peaks, from which, tradition tells us, Pontius Pilate 
committed suicide. The tale, however questionable, seems 
to liave become rootbound. The group of lofty summits 
still bear the name of Mont Pilat. For a few moments one 
is in the beautiful valley of the turbulent Isere, only to 
cross it, and then its swift tide and rocky eminences are 
left in the northeast as we dash on in our southerly route. 
We gradually leave the course of the Rhone, though we 
continue in a parallel line for some distance. 

Avignon, once a Roman colony, and in the fourteenth 
centur^^ the seat of the pontifical throne, if containing no 
magnets of present power, is at least interesting as the 
theatre of the melodramatic phase in the lives of Petrarch 
and Laura. This melancholy, love-languishing poet-laure- 
ate, crowned in the Roman cai)ital, conceived his immortal 
passion for Laura de Noves when he was scarcely past boy- 
hood, and though his importunities were repelled with de- 
termined purpose, — so the story runs, — throughout this 
3'oung lady's virginity and wifehood, the faithful Romeo 
continued to sing his love sonnets until the cold earth 
shrouded his constant and tempestuous heart forever. It 
was a woful day when the young Italian poet was first 
enthralled by the "nymph at her orisons" in the nunnery 
of St. Claire. The historian forgets to relate whether 
Laura's passion for her husband, Hugues de Sade, equalled 
Petrarch's ardent affection. While the lover was travelling 
through Italy, France, Spain, and Germany, gaining rich 
laurels alike from the volatile Gaul and grim Teut(m, pre- 
serving classical manuscripts and pouring out the perennial 
fountains of a love that were destined to carry his fame down 
through the unfathomable abysses of time, Laura re- 
mained in Avignon, going through the maternal routine of 
domestic life, and when he returned to the hallowed spot 
after an absence of nearly a decade, found his idol op- 
pressed by domestic grievances and a prolific offspring. 
Oh ! what a prosaic planet is this earth! We are prone to 
believe we are living in an age from which all the chivalry 
and grace, and poetry have departed. But such lessons 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 219 

teach ns to wish no longer for the lyrical days when Ciipid 
was just as capricious as now. Poor Petrarch ! his passion 
for Laura was one of those pleasing fancies that serve to 
point a moral and to hang a tale. 

And then Rienzi — Rienzi who was transformed from a 
poetic dreamer into a political reformer. This wild revo- 
lutionist is another sanctifying memory of Avignon. 
Rietizi, the companion of Petrarch, who languished in 
prison while the latter luxuriated in palaces. Rienzi, who 
perished on the Capitol steps at the hands of the infuriated 
populace, — the same wild populace that had gathered here 
to dignify Petrarch with the diadem of fame. Yes! One 
is fascinated with the profound historical reflections of the 
vicinity, and longs to linger by the wa}' to visit the haunts 
of the poets. With these close associations, and the south- 
ern flush and hush of the landscape, one is inclined to be- 
lieve he has already crossed the boundaries of the Cisalpine 
Gaul of the ancients. The gradual transition into Italy is 
at once distinguishable in the soft pronunciation and dul- 
cet tones of the peasants, the frequent appearance of holy 
fathers from the cloisters, mountain goats on the rocky 
passes, and little donkeys bea^ring weighty burdens over 
perilous crags. Mountain springs plunge from their dizzy 
heights to feed the great wells of irrigation tliat are 
turned through vast tracks of arable land. Tunnels are 
becoming frequent now, and we issue from these subter- 
ranean cells, sometimes to find ourselves perched upon 
lofty ledges overhanging the flowering dale or sharp de- 
file, and sometimes at the base of a sterile promontory 
rearing its summit skywards. Skirting the Etang de 
Barre^ an inland lake, a vast sheet of water bluer than 
heaven, and as silent as death, we entered the longest 
mountain cavern in France, from which we emerged to 
greet the mystic Mediterranean, where the little boats with 
their lateen sails were gliding over the azure ripples like 
butterflies pausing upon flowers, with gay wings elevated, 
not outspread ; where Marseilles lay in iier extensive sand- 
beds, caressed by the blue surge, protected by the isolated 
pile of Chateau d^If^ and the long pier and blinding bas- 
tions of Fort St. Jean, and sheltered by the stony apex of 
Notre Dame de la Garde. 

Coming into Marseilles I was impressed by its Moorish 
appearance and Southern aroma. It is wholly Oriental. 
There is the smell and the moisture of the sea, the luxuri- 
ant foliage of graceful palms, and a miasmatic, stifling 



220 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

atmosphere. The windows are shaded by gaudy awnings 
of the Turkish type; a flaming combination of orange and 
blue, green and maroon, pink and purple material in stripes 
broader than my two hands. Over the shops these showy 
caparisons extend in variegated ostentation; and all along 
the margin of the sidewalk orange and lemon trees, and 
waving palms exhale their fragrance. Women selling 
fish and fruit stand at the corners under the branching 
sliade, in short, flashy petticoats, low-cut velvet bodices, 
and crimson or 3^ellow kerchiefs knotted over their bosoms ; 
they have swarthy, carnal faces, framed in a massive coil 
of raven hair. They are interesting creatures, l)ut essen- 
tially eartliy. The galley-slaves, chained in long lines, 
work on the stone harbor and on the pier of St. Jean. 
They toil in painful silence, and the strains of the Marseil- 
laise are suppressed in their agony. 

As we drove into the courtyard of the hotel it looked 
like a scene in a fairy palace. There was a cosmopolitan 
throng clustered about the tables under the feathery palms, 
and by the golden fruit-trees; canary birds twittered in 
brazen cages, while invalid ladies, who had been ordered 
by physicians to the salubrity of a soft Southern climate, 
dozed in the sleepy atmosphere, and florid Englishmen 
equipped for an Alpine or Tyrolese tour, in wash-basin hat 
and Turkish towel drapery, drank their Stout and read 
their Times. A canopy of colored glass overhangs the 
octagonal rotunda of the court, and as I pass to my left 
over the great marble stairway an icy chill shivers through 
me, and 1 pit3'^ the valetudinarian who comes here for 
health. The hotel is palatial, an extravagance of marbles, 
frescoes, and gilding, as all such French constructions are; 
the ciiambers airy, and the casements draped with lace and 
crimson satin. Opposite my door I espied several luxuri- 
ously appointed bath-rooms; not large tin-tubs to be filled 
and carried into the apartments, but really American baths. 
My soul exulted at the revelation, and I determined to 
occupy one of the welcome novelties. It was like meeting 
an old and appreciated friend in a foreign land. The maid, 
upon inquiry, replied they were all vacant, and she would 
prepare one for my revel immediately. 

Now "preparing a bath" in Europe, being interpreted, 
means placing a Turkish towel, as large as a sheet, on the 
lower level of the tub, which is an excessively uncomfort- 
able process, and not providing soap, which is quite as 
inconvenient. I have already learned to carry away my 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 221 

candle'^, but charging for soap is a phase of liotel extortions 
I had neglected to note. The Englishman who runs over 
the Continent generally once a year to escape the dismal 
season at home, becomes an habitue in these meridian 
regions, and, knowing their customs, invariably travels 
with his soap. Americans are expected to do likewise, 
and, failing, they inevitably pay for their neglect. Now 
when I was wholly immersed I made a direful discovery, 
— the absence of soap, — and, ringing for the attendant to 
supply the need, who seemed amazed that I was unfur- 
nished with the article, went in search of it. It was quite 
half an hour before slie made her appearance. Several 
times in the interim I had rung the bell in the hope of 
tidings, and was informed tliat the commissioner had been 
sent out to purchase it. When I read Mark Twain's anec- 
dote in Innocents Abroad^ being unsophisticated, and ap- 
preciating the wit's facetiae, I could not credit his story of 
a similar circumstance. Now I am convinced his book is 
a work of facts, satirized l)y tliis ridiculing genius. And 
yet the guidebook says "Marseilles is noted for its manu- 
facture of soaps and oils." 

The wider my journey extends, more fixed becomes the 
conviction that these Latin nations, with all their centuried 
wisdom and experience, do not comprehend the luxury of 
living as we do. 

There are some points of comparison between Lyons and 
Marseilles, but the contrasts overrule, alike in their topo- 
graphical and commercial features. While the populace of 
Lyons toils at the looms, the populace of Marseilles labors 
in the docks; the wealth of Lyons is in its marvellous 
quantity and quality of cocoons, and the opulence of Mar- 
seilles in its valuable exports; if Lyons gave Gambetta to 
the French Republic, Marseilles furnished Thiers ; Lyons 
manufactures while Marseilles traffics, and Lyons reposes 
peacefully in a communit^^ of her own, while Marseilles 
gathers within her walls the travelling and trading throngs 
from the four quarters of the globe. 

Lotteries seem to be the prevailing pleasure and vice of 
the lower classes. When night falls, and the patrician 
element are riding through the Prado toward home, and 
the great lamps swing over the doors and throw the dark 
foliage and flashy awnings into vivid contrast, then the 
laborers from the quays and the sailors from the vessels, 
the poor women carrying babies and the meretricious 
beauties occup3ing the tall tenant-houses overlooking the 

19^ 



222 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

mnzarine waters of tlie Mediterranean, throng to these 
houbes of cliance and risk their purses upon a dress, a hat, 
a watcli, a bed, a set of jewely, or a broken mirror, which 
are all gathered into a motley heap. I even saw birds from 
the Levant and Maltese kittens gambled for in the same 
breath with an old teakettle. There was a fascination in 
the strata of life gathered about these Faros, and 1 loitered 
in them to study the passion which flattered some with 
success and happiness, while others were sent home wretch- 
ed by their disasters and disappointments. Even the fruit- 
woman must leave her tray at the corner, where the flaming 
torch casts a more luscious glamour over her sparse store, 
to enjoy the wild hazard. The peanut-boy and the ragged 
gamin from the docks blend in the excited rivalry, and 
peril their few coppers — earned, or begged, or stolen, 
Heaven and themselves alone know best — for the false 
glitter of some empty bagatelle. And here they flock, night 
alter night, to feed this unhealthy and insatiable passion. 



LETTER XLVII. 

" In the ages of faith, before the clay 

When men were too proud to weep or pray, 
Tliere stood in a red-roofed Breton town, 
Snugly nestled 'twixt sea and down, 
A chapel for shnple souls to meet 
Kightly, and sing with voices sweet, 
Ave Maria." 

Marseilles, May, 1878. 

A VISIT to the docks of Marseilles, if not so hazardous, 
is certainly more interesting than to adventure the crest of 
Notre Dame de la Garde. This church, perched upon the 
Alpine vertex sheltering the old port, is regarded by the 
Marseillaise as their pillars of Hercules; therefore, not to 
have risked its perillous paths, is not to have seen the city; 
so I determined upon doing Notre Dame de la Garde, 
without a suspicion of its situation, its merits, or the mode 
of access. I had not proceeded far over the hilly streets 
leading to the plinth of the eminence, before I was terror- 
stricken, and I would have abandoned the undertaking. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 223 

had it not been a confession of my pusillanimit3^ It was a 
tedious pull over rocky slopes and furrowed coils, until the 
inclination became a straight oblique plane, and the driver 
dismounted to guide the horse over the precipitous ridge. 
At times the road contracted into a mere stony ledge, 
scarcely wide enough to allow the wheels of our convej'- 
ance to pass, frequently rolling and bouncing over frag- 
ments of bowlders that bestrewed the wa}^; then, upou 
the brink of the precipice the gravel crushed and yielded, 
and we often heard it rattling among the flinty crags 
below. These repetitions of the earth crumbling away 
from under our feet, as it were, transformed my journey 
from one of pleasure, as 1 had contemplated, into one of 
pain. From vast granite vaults where rough-hewn walls 
closed in on every side, only the sky visible, we 'turned 
abrupt corners to find ourselves upon sharp spurs, with the 
blue waves tossing far away to the left, the busy life of the 
city in dizzy confusion below. Yet still far ahead stood 
Notre Dame de la Garde, in clear outline against the hori- 
zon. The coachman manifested some solicitude for my 
l)leasure by stopping upon every giddy height, and point- 
ing to Marseilles, exclaimed ^''regardez, c^eat trop grande,^^ 
but I was not intrepid enough to take his advice. He 
could not comprehend my fear, and repeated his importuni- 
ties until I entreated him to pass on. It was thrilling in 
its grandeur, but it was not a picture I cared to dwell upon. 
It was a religious festa, and the peasants in their fantas- 
tic costumes and broad brows, many from the hamlet of 
Catalans, were scaling the rock}'- altitudes to offer their 
waxen tributes at the shrine of their Holy Patroness. 
Many of the children carried gay chaplets of paper flowers, 
while their elders bore tapers of every size, varying from 
the ordinary tallow to spermaceti five feet long and six 
inches in circumference. Frequently these men and women 
in holiday attire, on their way to their Virgin Goddess, 
oflTerings in their hands and orisons on their lips, paused 
at our carriage to beg centimes^ and so pertinacious were 
they that they often forgot their religious mission. Upon 
reaching the crest where the sacred fortress is enthroned, 
an ocean of childhood literally overflowed the long flight of 
steps leading to the goal ; a handsome structure, but not so 
effective as I had a right to expect, as a reward for my 
travail ; but the view of the city, obtained from this vantage- 
ground, which expanded over the entire valley, the galaxy 
of shining villas couched upon the" encircling hillsides, the 



224 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

sterile base of Chateau d'lf and Ratonnean, caressed by 
the azure waves, and the forest of shipping with the colors 
of many nations floating over the harbor, as if to welcome 
travellers from every zone, was an entrancing compensa- 
tion. The coachman led his poor beast over the declivity 
with an empty voiture^ while I passed on with bruised feet 
and agitated limbs over the rocky pathway only to be beset 
by photograph, cake, lemonade, and souvenir venders; 
blind beggars, halt beggars, scarred beggars, and mendi- 
cant friars, who, in their lus?ty manhood, seemed counter- 
feit l)eggars, assuming the wail of woe upon the appearance 
of any one who ajjpeared to have two sous to give away. 
If we refused to sow our coppers broadcast, double-distilled 
curses, uttered with vehemence, and thrice repeated, hurled 
our souls down to the depths of perdition. Many of the 
j)easant men we met had crimson or gaudy-striped snoods 
knotted about their heads; these I instinctively avoided at 
first fearing they were banditti^ but upon further acquaint- 
ance, discovered them to be of that element known as the 
Catalans or Spanish gypsies, inhabiting the delta at the 
southeast of Marseilles, and stretching into the Mediterra- 
nean, — the community from which young Edmond Dantes, 
afterwards Count Monte Cristo, Uumas's hero, chose his 
bride. This population that I passed on the mountain are 
the offspring of the Spanish colony who perched like pen- 
guins upon the promontory many centuries ago, and in 
their short beaded and broidered jackets, and flaunting 
kerchiefs wound about their heads, we traced their Moorish 
origin. The colors and trinkets of their heteroclite costume 
liave degenerated with the years, but still the principle of 
the dress of their ancestors is preserved. 

To the citadel Nicolas^ and thence over the quays of the 
oblong old port, there was a different life from that we left, 
crawling up and down the rough, religious ladder that led 
to the heavenward shiine. BeggarsI Oh, yes, there were a 
hundredfold more beggars and swaggerers among the docks 
than upon the granite mount, but there was too much 
diversion to heed the tricks of sharpers in the crush of the 
myriad craft and the throngs of sailors on duty on the 
merchantmen, the hordes of poor panting human toilers 
loading and unloading the trading vessels locked in the 
basins, and the care-free troops of seamen off duty, with 
full pockets and light hearts, whose gold was soon to 
vanish in the seduction of the glittening casinos and their 
black-eyed sweethearts. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 225 

Then, in great storehouses of grain, spices, and provi- 
sions bordering the wharves, there is very much tlie same 
wild life and secret habits common in the great rendezvous 
of foreign traffic in New York, Baltimore, and Philadel- 
phia. As we rode, we seemed to diffuse an American air, 
and were several times hailed in our course, and informed 
that there was an American vessel in port; we were re- 
quested to visit the sea-bird from our native land ; but we 
persistently' refused all these pertinacious civilities. As 
we travel we learn that to accept attentions means an ex- 
pected reward. And so we turned the square of the An- 
cient Port, and there, upon the opposite quay, we found 
tlie shops where tlie ship mechanics were at work repairing 
Spanish galleons, Turkish feluccas, broad-bottomed Dutch 
steam barges, black British cruisers, American brigs that 
had brought cargoes of tobacco, petroleum, and cotton, 
and Chinese junks with packages of opium. 

Out upon the glaring pier of Fort St. Jean, I overlooked 
the motionless sea, all along this Southern shore — as mo- 
tionless and as blue as the cerulean canopy — and then 
watched the great ships freighted with their treasures of 
eil, fruits, wines, and perfumes, bound some for the Levant, 
and others for the Occident, quietly vanishing over the 
horizon. There is an ineffable charm about these foreign 
seaports, and to me Marseilles is more wonderful because 
far more varied than Liverpool. It may have been the 
salubrity of the French climate and the poetry of the azure 
Mediterranean, in striking contrast with foggy dingy Eng- 
land, and the muddy Mersey, and it may have been my 
own mood, but today the scene upon the wharves was 
strangely Oriental. 

The Ancient Port was the only haven Marseilles owned 
until within the last thirty years; now the entire facing of 
the niaritime metropolis glistens with the outer walls of 
the basins. Though it might scarcely be deemed necessary 
to construct wet docks where the ebb and flow of the tide 
is so moderate as in the Gulf of Lyons, still not only is 
the city hemmed by these mammoth inclosures, but there is 
a demand for increased accommodations owing to the tre- 
mendous accession of trade with foreign powers. 

In this fair city I enjoyed the broad boulevard of La 
Cannebiere, with its fine shops and garish awnings, and 
cosmopolitan multitudes ; and the Rue de la Republique, 
which I take to be one of recent birth from its name, where 
the houses are as tall and white as in pearly Paris ; through 



226. PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the Prarlo I have lolled in dreamy mood under the shadows 
of leafy avenues that stretch behind and before in unbroken 
colonnades of green, and even in the Boulevard de Long- 
champ, with the transcendent fountain and statuesque front 
of the Palais in the perspective; all these beauties and fas- 
cinations, together with tlie hundred other attractions of 
a great city, are still inferior to the solemn majesty of the 
environs. 

Starting from the careening naval basin on the eastern 
extremity of the old port, we continued over a contracted 
j)ath bordering tlie sea that winds about the tongue of land 
that forms the Creek de la Reserve, then to the northeast 
we met the broad white level Corniche, the pride of Southern 
France and Italy, which extends from Marseilles down to 
the toe of Italy along the border of the Mediterranean. 
In the village des Catalans we found the homes of the 
community we met upon the Alpine passes. Little white- 
washed nests that seemed falling to decay, some holes 
hewn in the side of rocks, apparently constructed of earth, 
crumbling to a fine powder certain to evaporate with the 
first breath of the hyperborean Mistral that sweeps over 
Provence in scourging velocity. Squalor and poverty 
reigned supreme, yet about all there was a picturesque 
phasis at least pleasing. It may have been the luxuriant 
arbors of roses, the towering heights, the zigzag titled 
))aths, where these hovels reposed sleepily, the brilliant 
dress of the inhabitants upon the glaring alleys, or the 
mystic lapis lazuli of the sea. 

On the left of this scene we had all the beauty of a rug- 
ged, sublime landscape with its pastoral and even gypsy 
life. On the right were the blue waters laviu": the Cor- 
niche, and dashing upon the base of the sterile islands, with 
the glamour of romance and peril hanging over them. 
Far ahead the chemin de Corniche coils about the border 
of the land like a silver ribbon. 

In reaching the Rest Roubion we passed the " Yalley of 
the Shepherds," and the Vallon de I'Oriol, that lay like 
slumbering twins cradled between the heights of Notre 
Dame de la Garde and the marine ridges. 

The Rest Roubion stands upon a plateau above the sea. 
Entering the grounds of the hotel we climbed sloping 
paths and groups of little steps until the scene below in- 
creased in beaut}'- with every view. Exquisite parterres, 
and vases burdened by an exuberance of blooming rose 
vines, and closely-cropped sward, gave the spot a mytholo- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 22T 

gical air, resembling the haunts of the Grecian gods and 
Neapolitan fairies. 

The rain fell, but the sea lost none of its wonderful color, 
and a sharp penetrating wind greeted us even here on 
this southern shore and in these declining days of May. 



LETTER XLYIII. 

"O I The earth is fair in plain and glade, 

In valley and mountain range, 
But it changes as the ages fade. 

While the brave sea knows no change : 
Along the shore, as in ages past, 

His noisy footsteps fall, 
And the gray rock melts to his touch at last, 

For the sea rules all ! 

Yea ! the sea rules all ! " 

Nice, May, 1878. 

My task should be reserved for the poet. It is not in 
sober black and white prose that the splendors of the 
Riviera should be calendared. They demand tiie glowing 
harmony of Byron and the inspired pencil of Raphael. 
Around this Mediterranean nest there is just now an in- 
effable beatitude in the air and a glorious springtide of 
color. ^ 

*'Ah me ! what hand can pencil guide, or pen, 
To follow half on which the eye dilates, 
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken 
Than tliose whereof such things the bard relates. 
Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates?" 

Following the line of the Corniche along the brim of sea 
from Marseilles one realizes the Frenchman's i^atriotic 
aphorism, "La belle France." To determine just what 
beauties are included in this compliment is an insoluble 
problem, as the boundaries of France are shifted twice in 
a generation, in conformity with the revolutions of the 
political axis. Despite stereotyped eulogy, the English 
landscape never kindled in me much ecstasy, but here God 
hands us such a perfect chrysolite, that man's genius can- 
not divine nor describe its peerless radiance. It is not 
municipal taste nor municipal government, religious senti- 



228 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

ment nor political equipoise, not moral dogmas, nor social 
discipline, that masters the stranger beholding this lovely 
reo-ion for the first time. It is the chaos of enchantment 
that covers this whole route of travel. Even the toppling 
towers of the white convents, floating 'twixt sky and sea, 
seemed to me nature's crown to the whole panorama, just 
as if she had "snatched a grace beyond the rules of art." 

There was a cloud overshadowing Marseilles when I left 
it, not a political nor commercial cloud, but a dense atmo- 
spheric frown that was severed into shreds by the shining 
scimitar of the sun before we came in sight of Toulon, the 
war harbor of France, where human beasts of burden toil 
in long files, manacled l)y the galley-chain; where the 
sybaritic sharper, the delicate perfumed lover, who in a 
frenzy of jealousy had killed his fair one, and the double- 
distilled felon, suffer side by side. 

From the heights beyond Toulon there is a view of earth, 
sky, and water, that stamps it as one of nature's chefs- 
d^ceuvre. Through the tunnels, and over the ledges, we 
turned an angle, and yonder, nestled on the slopes of Des 
Maures, we saw what looked to be a great white cathedral, 
or cloister. It proved to be the town of H3'eres, rapidly 
expanding into a great sanitarium, though perched upon 
too lofty a ridge to be sheltered from the scourging blasts 
of the mistral. In another curve the town is lost, but we 
get a full view of its islands, Ij'ing off in the Mediterranean, 
their sterile foundations and fortified capitals blended with 
a heap of sparkling rugged rock. 

For almost seventy miles we skirted the base of the 
Maritime Alps, nature's eternal monuments, piled ridge 
npon ridge, finally fading away in the clouds, ungarnished 
by a blade of verdure. They extended close to our car, 
until each projection would seem about to dash the win- 
dows to splinters; then b}^ an abru[)t evolution we were 
whisked into the black bowels of the tunnelled Colossus. 

At the little harbor of St. Raphael, about half an hour 
from Cannes, Napoleon landed when he came from Eg3'pt, 
bathed in the glory of transcendent victory. Fourteen 
years after, crushed by his own reverses, and followed by 
the scorn of his people, he again weighed anchor from the 
same port upon his ostracism to Elba, and within the year 
returned and landed not many miles from the same spot. 
What more cogent example of the irony of fate than these 
nnforgotten lessons in the meteoric career of the Corsican 
Corporal ? 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 229 

At Cannes, the Cape May of France, we only rested to 
deposit our freight of invalid English and rich French, 
who came to find a haven in its salubrious air and perfumed 
flowers. Hedges of pink and crimson rose-vines, twisted 
and woven into one exuberance of bloom, now replaced 
the glossy, vigorous myrtle. Great groves of blossoming 
orange-trees stretched around us, and the glow of the cac- 
tus and oleander cast the purity of the former into painful 
pallor. May and June are the harvest months of roses 
and orange-blossoms in the Midi, and the peasants were 
embowered in fragrant wreaths, plucking them for the 
perfume distillers. The peculiarity of the soil in this 
region seems to be favorable to the cultivation of aromatic 
plants, as the grape is indigenous to the Burgundy and 
Bordeaux districts. The English have done much to en- 
hance the value of a section that God has burdened with 
fruits of splendor, by erecting luxurious homes on the 
hills and dales, and so attracting the best society from their 
own bleak island and the French cities and provinces. 
Perhaps Lord Brougham, by making Cannes his winter 
home, gave the impetus and impelled the annual tide of 
visitors to this Mediterranean resort. 

These seaside cities of the Latins have none of the 
ephemeral features of our ocean resorts. They are of 
marble and granite, and strong in metropolitan splendor 
and solidity. True, they have existed for centuries, and 
were temples of art and sanctuaries of learning before we 
were even struggling in the womb of the past. 

But the devotees of fashion and of the golden calf have 
fled, and Nice is as voiceless as the great Sahara, though 
as I came upon her to-day she was arrayed like "Solomon 
in all his glory." The mountain torrents leap from cliff to 
dale beyond the city gates, and yet the waters of tlie Pail- 
Ion which bisect the town scarcely cover the stones of its 
broad bed. Th« sparkling city reposes in an amphitheatre, 
guarded from the northern blasts by the mountains that 
close around the inland border, with only the blue sea and 
the drifting boats as a stage scene. 

The city is a vast Eden of deserted hotels and vacant 
villas. Along the principal boulevards and Promenade des 
Anglais cards of "to let" stare in undaunted succession 
from portal and shutter. The beat of hoofs, sounds of 
revelry, and the loud ostentation of foreign nabobs and 
American millionaires are dead on the parade by the sea, 
20 



230 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

where a few months ago sk}^, ocean, and air resounded with 
their saturnalia. 

Following the course of the waters, the ramparts seem 
ablaze in a white column of sunlight, capped by an odorous 
and fervid blush of cactus and crimson cypress, glowing 
oleander and golden oranges, the tropical plumose palms 
waving over the aureate fruit and flaming flowers. The at- 
mosphere seems asleep in an agony of sweetness, and life is 
as morbid in the streets and gardens as it is in the environs, 
where we meet only the goatherd or the blossom-gatherers, 
and see only the monastic towers of convent or cloister. 
Mounting tlie apex of Cimies and St. Pons, we hear onl}-" 
the rippling laugh of a little child, a sign of solitude. There 
is over the hills and through the dales a religious hush, an 
odor of sanctity, a beauty of holiness, in marked contrast 
with tlie whirl of the capital and the thrift of tiie provinces, 
and I am prone to believe I am alread}^ within the spiritual 
sovereignty of Holy Mother Church. We see none of the 
traditional squalor of Italy, but all its silent comfort. 
Rough wooden crosses, uncouth crucifixes, and graceless 
shrines, protect the crops and hallow the roadsides. Who 
can enjoy such a country but those born upon its soil, and 
who have mingled in its customs? Surely not those who 
endeavor to gain an idea of its beauty from canvas, and 
much less readers of novels and travels. You may figure 
a steep hillside clad in royal purple and emerald, lighted 
by the crimson dress of the peasant girl, and a little white 
cottage home in an arbor of aloe and cypress; a rude 
ascending path, over which vintagers are drawing gra})e 
wagons to which they themselves are harnessed, while their 
wives or daughters i)ush the wheels ; a garden wall, behind 
which fallow fruit glistens; a village priest counting his 
Ave Marias and Paternosters; and the hoary ruins of cathe- 
dral or chateau as a sacred coronal upon the mountain 
brow. You may even see the scene vitalized by broad acres 
of wheat and timber; but no brush can paint or quill de- 
scribe the soft laugh of the maiden, the tender lowing of 
the kine, the perfume of garlands, the marvellous maze of 
color, and the sublime influences of atmosphere; they must 
be inhaled and felt to be realized. It is not so much per- 
ception as emotion. 

The world would tell me I have lost much by finding this 
siren's nest stripped of its ga}^ audience and their gayer 
pursuits and tastes. But if it was rife with frolic, music, 
receptions, baccarat saloons, and the riot of human life, 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 231 

would this spirituelle element be potential? No! I have 
viewed the fair goddess of the sea in all tlie sweet purity of 
nakedness, and find her one of the sacred creatures that the 
flash of jewels and the glitter of gold would carnalize. 

There are fine boulevards of shops, extending from one 
extremity of the town to the other, but, with few exceptions, 
they exhibit only the extract of the grape and the olive, 
and these appear in great profusion. The streets seem to 
have been swept and the gardens garnished for Sunday; 
the denizjens have donned their Sabbath garb, the white 
roads, white houses, honey-laden atmosphere, the fervent 
clearness of the sky, each man and woman taking shelter 
from the noonday heat under a crimson, blue, pink, green, 
or yellow umbrella; the whole place looks like the opening 
scene in an opera bonffe. Nature is in a swoon and the 
people are in a holiday. 

Although a city of the sea, there is none of its mois- 
ture in the climate; the mountain air is volatile; the May 
season is full of peace; Harlequin is in his bed; the fiddle 
is at rest; all the fun of the place is pantomime; and no- 
thing seems alive but the sweet melody of a distant chime 
and the sad call of a solitary robin. 



LETTER XLIX. 

"O Christ ! it is a goodly sight to see 

What Heaven hath done for this delicious land ! 
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree ! 

What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand ! 

But man would mar them with an impious hand, 
And when the Almighty lifts his fiercest scourge 

'Gainst those who must transgress his high command, 
With treble vengeance will his hot shafts urge, 
Gaul's locust host, and earth from fellest foeman purge." 

Childe Harold. 

Monaco, May, 1878. 

Monaco is the Principality, but Monte Carlo is the 
Casino, and Casino is king. Monaco sits upon a lofty 
promontory overhanging the sea, looking like the ruins of 
a great catiiedral. But there ai"e no architectural or 
geographical ruins at Monte Carlo, only an incalculable 



232 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

wreck of lives, and these are not exhibited to the seeking 
stranger like crumbling mounds and decaying castles, hut 
hidden under the gayety and glitter of seductive vices and 
costly adornments. Few stop at Monaco; all go to Monte 
Carlo, and when I left Nice on my further south-bound 
route along the Riviera, passing away from its pure, rest- 
ful, religious atmosphere, — enhanced by the sweet Sabbath, 
— I felt as if I was taking one stupendous leap from heaven 
to well no, for Monte Carlo is a strange and fascinat- 
ing hybrid of heaven and hell. 

Tlie same beauty of feature and outline prevails through 
the short ridge that leads from Nice to Monte Carlo. 
Perhaps the roses are in closer clusters, the cactuses in a 
greater blaze of fire, the sea bluer, the sky more intense, 
and the heights more dizzy; but the characteristics are 
exactly like^hose of this Franco-Italian region since I left 
Marseilles. Admiral Le Koy's vessel lay in the ba}' of 
Yillafranca at the corner of Nice, which I only glanced 
at from a natural louver window in the rocks. The line 
was now wholly subterranean, except at the stations or a 
rent in the mountain, where we welcomed daylight only 
for a second, to be again whisked into utt^r darkness. 

Around a great projecting curve Monaco bursts upon 
you I It seems detached from the mainland, and hangs 
'twixt earth and sea like a great swinging garden. Novels 
and tracts, Murray or Baedeker had painted the Arcadia 
to which I was hastening; although none have succeeded 
in extolling, nor even justifying its attractions, as its most 
pronounced influences are a sense, not perception. The 
Corniche coils about it, and the railway traverses the 
Principality from one extremity to the other, where the 
Maritime Alps project in bold spurs into the Mediterra- 
nean. It is the star of the most luxuriant and charming 
district of the Riviera, though the view obtained from the 
car is greatly disparaged by the irrepressible granite monu- 
ments. Monaco crests the culminating point of the road, 
though it and Monte Carlo and the environs are overlooked 
by the towered pediment of Turbia. 

The histor}^ of ihe peMt principality is cloudy, but it has 
been under the sovereignty of the Grimaldi since the tenth 
centur}', of which the reigning prince, Charles Honore ill, 
is a direct descendant. He is a man of sixtj'^, sensitive of 
all the delicious beauty and l)eguiling pleasures of his 
monarchy, and a voluptuarj' in costly Paris, where he 
passes six months of the year. Tired of entertaining and 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 233 

g-nmbling at home, lie a^oes to the capital, that is only more 
of a metropolis in latitude and population, there to be en- 
tertained and gambled with. Within his own contracted 
walls he has all that Paris may unfold except miles and 
peoples, — churches, cloisters, colleges, palaces, gardens, 
ca.fes^ and casinos, and the addition of nature's handicraft 
in the wild supernal landscape. 

There is a dogano (custom-house), with the escutcheon 
of the Grimaldi, at the station, but there is no overhauling 
of merchandise nor duties to be paid. There are no 
formulas, nor irritating detention at the gates; we passed 
the golden portals as jauntily as so many deadheads into 
the gamesters heaven. We required no passport, no cre- 
dentials of character, and our tempers were not ruffled by 
the tedium of the red-tape process with our baggage. We 
all felt a mutual ownership in the elysium. Of course we 
pushed forward to the casino station, Monte Carlo, a short 
mile from the principality throne. Why stop at Monaco? 
AH its sweets I had fed upon ad nam^eam; pictures, 
statuary, flowers, birds, palaces, antiquities. Oh, yes ! I was 
very fond of all, but I had already enjoyed them in lavish 
loveliness, and if not exactly surfeited— for there are com- 
fits of which I am never blase — I knew their colors, flavors, 
and effects; but in the casino I had a bonbonnier from 
which I had not torn the shining tinsel wrapper. 

Monte Carlo is the lovely hill of sin and swindling, if I 
may be permitted to use two synonyms to express one 
thought. There is no concealment, all is open. The lux- 
urious railway carriage stops at a station that looks like a 
piece of highly polished furniture. I ascended the money 
paradise by a road as easy as a velvet walk, flanked by urns 
and wreaths of flowers, and as I reached the top I was en- 
veloped in perfume, and fairly speechless with surprise. 
Everything is regardless of cost, and I'egardful of harmony. 
Bazaars are open on all sides; carriages, as gayly dressed 
as Cinderella's equipages drawn by fairies, glide by laden 
with flashil}^ dressed women, and liveried attendants with 
gold and silver lace gleaming in the sunlight, pass along 
the cultivated walks; magnificent chateaux and hotels, 
and conversation halls of yellow stone; exotics embowered 
the lace-draped windows, and framed the ledges; throngs of 
people flocking into a lovely saloon, from which exquisite 
strains of music float in a sort of eloquent radiance upon 
the startled senses, — all this I saw in a dazed way as I 
hurried to the hotel. One's first thought is to join the 

20* 



234 PICTURES ANl) PORTRAITS 

glittering procession and take in the points of the organ- 
ized spectacle. How superb the landscape here in the 
loveliest part of old Italy and new France, where the purple 
hills I have so often seen in foreign pictures close about 
me. There is a golden glow in the atmosphere, and these 
strange yet fascinating colors exceed in mystic radiance 
the copies I once thought impossibly artificial. Monte 
Carlo is a rock polished into a sort of devil's elysium, and 
tiie purple hills, often veiled in a sadder mist, rise about 
it as if they had been placed by some mechanical invention, 
and add rather to the prepared beauty ; small delicate 
houses of white stone, and Catholic churches in snowy 
purit}', set off the darker hues, like seagulls floating in a 
black tempest on the deep ocean. 

The Monte Carlo faro is upon the plateau of rock hover- 
ing over the station. Great flights of marble steps and 
glowing terraces, glistening parapets and sparkling balus- 
trades, lead to the fair Circe. A rumbling little coach 
carried us over a steep narrow road, flanked by beautiful 
cottages and gardens, to the Hotel de Paris, within the 
Casino grounds. I saw it was a silver}^ place upon enter- 
ing by the vast marble vestibules, spacious stairways, and 
costly appointments; not so refreshing and calm as the 
hotel at Nice, with the shady palms waving through the 
stone corridors, and the little beds draped with their fleecy 
bobinet curtains. The smallest and simplest double cham- 
ber in this castle of a hotel was two dollars a day, rates 
that would exceed ours at home, when the table and extras 
were included. Although we are out of season, th& halls 
are rife with the hum and jargon of foreign voices and 
hurrying footsteps. Here at least there is none of the 
painful silence pervading the English hotels. Every one 
seems selfishly heedful of his own desires and pleasures, 
and bent u})on his own pursuits. There is a continual tide 
of gamblers drifting between the hotel and the Temple of 
Faro, only a few yards apart. 

The last strains of the afternoon concert have died upon 
the air, but still the votaries of tliis strange and seductive 
worship come and go. The plot in front of the piazza and 
the broad steps of the sanctuary of sin are ever full and 
ever changing. The whirl of human flies looks like the evo- 
lutions of moats in a spot of noonday sunlight. The steep 
gray rocks and loftier mountains (^lose in the Casino arena 
on the north, the east, and the west, and the white palisades 
overhang the blue sea on the south. From where I sit 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 235 

and gsze about me, I discover no visible egress for the 
poor unfortunate neophyte who realizes an ill-chosen vo- 
cation and too arduous a rubric in the Holy of Holies, ex- 
cept to plunge from the snow3' parapet into the surging 
eternity below. But could any one ever grow heartsore 
or enimied in so beautiful and well-attuned a section ? 
Surel}', they must be ingrates. It is an enchanted region, 
and the insurmountable walls of granite close about us, 
not to impress us with a sense of imprisonment, but only 
as a sweet retreat from the vulgar world. This is the in- 
nocent visitor's first impression. Little kiosks, cafes, and 
pavilions, dazzling in Oriental frescoes, border the coast 
and are scattered over the gardens ; fountains cast their 
l^layful waters to and from vases toppling under their 
weight of luxuriance and perfume, and marble gods and 
goddesses glance between the foliage of pines, aloes, palms, 
and oleanders, around whose roots, and over the earth, 
great black gutta-percha water-pipes coil like vitalizing 
serpents. A Dominican friar, in black gown and calotte, 
flanked by his acolytes, crosses the white square, but per- 
sistently ignores the colonnades and disciples of the Palace 
of Chance. With the gathering shadows a chill air blows 
off the northeastern peaks, that chastens the atmosphere 
of all its saline moisture, and the sound of the dinner-gong 
disturbs the devotees. There the>' come, flocking out from 
the solemnity of Vespers to the flesh-pots. 

Dinner at the Hotel de Paris is one of the most novel 
and characteristic processes of this gaming city. The salon 
differs from any of the others I have seen along the south- 
ern shore, and contrasts vividly with the one at the Hotel 
de Louvre et de la Paix at Marseilles, where my eye sought 
vainly for rest upon one square inch of lath and plaster, 
that was not blinding in a glare of white, gold repousse, 
and frescoes ; even the doors were china gloss, frescoed 
panels, and gilt beading. Here all decorations are equally 
elaborate, but in dark velvety tones of Pompeiian red, olive, 
green, dun shades, walnut and ebony woods and plate-glass ; 
no crystal and gilt chandeliers, but bronze metal. The 
room is an extensive; oblong with a lofty dome, and long 
windows set in deep embrasures, gorgeously upholstered, 
and looks like the hall where Apicius might have held his 
banquets. Columns separate it into two sections; the first 
furnished with small tables, where viands are ordered a la 
carte] the latter assigned to the table d^hote. The a la 
carte department was thronged b}' those whose faith was 



236 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

tlieir mistress, and liere the female element prevailed. Ah ! 
il gladdened my very soul to onin so potential a proof of 
the unselfishness and constancy of my sex ; even if mani- 
fested in behalf of an impure cause, it pi'oclaimed a loftier 
cast of character than that shown by the male cormorants 
by whom I was surrounded. Their wedded wife was 
forgotten in their appetites. They had two goddesses, 
Hazard and Glutor)y] which was the most despotic I am 
unable to say. Is it not George Eliot who says, "jThe 
passion of jealousy makes fiends, and the passion of hunger 
makes beasts of men ?" The latter species were all around 
me at the table. They are the sustaining element of this 
glittering palace, and have l>ribed all the waiters into their 
slaves. They were the first to be served with every course, 
and if a lady intervened she was omitted for the next 
gambler in the line. If the supply of food was unequal for 
the number of guests, a lady would be denied the delicacy, 
while a mysterious wink or sign to a waiter from the 
gambler next her commanded a replenished dish of the 
luxur}' she had been told was quite exhausted. I ordered 
ice-cream. As I wgis about to help myself one of the 
individuals near gave the cue, the cream and servant 
were transported as if by electricity, and when I collected 
my disbanded faculties I had the pleasure of seeing my 
fellow-diner enjojing mj^ dessert after having disposed of 
his own. Need I dwell or moralize upon this gross vul- 
garity ? Need I say that men with these base manners 
have baser morals, and that to be robbed of one's ice-cream 
was not so flagrant an indecency as to be robbed of one's 
amiability by the leering gaze of these heartless ghouls? 
But we were here as others were, even the best of our kind, 
to gratify a natural curiosity ; and true safety was to get 
out of it, quickly and quietly as possible. To remonstrate 
would be as great a folly as a proposition to purchase the 
bank. Such monsters are the foundation upon which the 
great temple rests, the fulcrum which supports it, the girder 
that binds it, the pillar that strengthens it, the stanchion that 
upholds it, the axis upon which it revolves. These crea- 
tures are the Atlantes, Caryatides, and Hercules that carry 
it. They are the elect children, the faithful believers, the 
clergy, the propagandists, and the society of the Taber- 
nacle of Fortune. 

The gambling-hall in the hotel is en deshabille j being 
garnished for the winter frolic; the green-baize tables with 
the chalked numerals are turned upside down, and the fi-es- 
coers' trestles are conspicuous in their stead. Although this 



1 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 237 

grepn-room^ if I may use the term, is entered from an octa- 
gonal conservatory, where stained glass, frescoes, exotics, 
divans, and otlier superb embellishments reign supreme, 
there is a chill about it as of a sepulchre. It is not the 
dismal solitude of the "banquet-hall deserted," depressing 
by the gayer memory of happy hearts and light feet, but 
the ghastly grandeur of the murder-chamber in Elsinore 
Castle; it is like a palatial judgment-hall, where thousands 
of souls have received their death-warrant, and the haunt- 
ing, terrifying memory hangs in cloudy oppression. It is 
a Golgotha. 

The first melodious notes of the evening concert came 
floating from the crowded, stuffy chambers of the Casino 
upon the sweet evening. I crossed the broad, white, maca- 
damized square, and climbing the marble stairway, paused 
beneath the portals, and turned to gaze once more upon the 
entrancing landscape, before plunging into the abyss of 
Risk, the great lure of lucre. The adornments were rich, 
but not meretricious; out7^e decorum was paramount; for- 
eign servants and well-dressed gentlemen were hurrying 
through the corridors. It had rather the appearance of a 
nobleman's palace prepared for a ball than a gaming-house. 
One is not compelled to gamble or even enter the slaughter- 
house of souls because he comes here. There is the concert, 
free to all, and to it I resorted to iron out the wrinkles of 
prudery from my conscience with the soothing harmonies 
of Rossini, Strauss, Meyerbeer, and Mozart. The hall was 
crowded when I entered ; many ladies and gentlemen, im- 
mature misses of fifteen or sixteen, and some of my delec- 
table companions of the table d^hote^ but this stratum I at 
once discovered to be restive — only listening to a couple of 
]>ars of the music, and then vanishing for perhaps a half or 
three-quarters of an hour. There floated in young ladies, 
unattended by gentlemen, from time to time, who disap- 
peared as rapidly and mysteriously as the men. These 
were the vestals, and I followed them to the shrine of their 
devotion. The roulette tables were surrounded by double 
and treble rows, the greater number females not past the 
meridian of life. The wheels were in motion, and the 
croupiers sat on either side of the centre of the long board, 
armed with their little money-rakes, and sixty times in an 
liour they command in sepulchral tones the "gentlemen to 
make their game." It is as silent as death within these 
walls, while thousands of dollars are changing hands, the 
bank winning every eight of ten games. The ladies were 



238 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the most successful, risking very little at a time, but inva- 
riably adding to it. The men are of two classes; the young 
and brainless fops of fortune, who are here cutting tlieir 
social eye-teeth, perhaps with less pain to themselves than 
to tlieir parents, upon the brilliants of Monte Carlo, and 
the burly, bullying roues and sharpers I have already 
spoken of. The women are of every age, station, and na- 
tion under the sun, the younger tossing down their stakes 
with the playful recklessness of children, and the elder 
ones seated at the table, brows furrowed with thought and 
anxiety, as if the}^ were solving the problem of their fate. 
I stuciied the game long. The more I lingered the more 
interested I became. Several times I thought I had unrav- 
elled the warp of its progress and penetrated its darkest 
secrets, when by some new law of success I became aware 
of my utter helplessness to disentangle the skein. 

The amusement is absorbing and seductive, and as I 
looked 1 too felt its peculiar influence. It is the charming 
expectancy of luck that enchants, and we are beguiled into 
the machination by an ecstasy of anticipation. Several 
times I found m}' hand upon my iioiHe-monnaie^ for I con- 
fess my evil genius was busj'^, i)articularly as I watched a 
3-oung lady who never staked more than a five franc piece, 
and yet whose star was ever propitious. Besides here, in 
the presence of the delusive evil, we do not think of the 
printed admonitions of the moralists. 

All is peaceful and luxurious, and with the exception of 
now and then a broken-hearted-looking old woman or a 
haggard man leaving the table in despair, we see none of 
the misery we had expected would stare at us like wretched 
deaths'-heads from every corner. There are many eager 
candidates for the vacant chair of the unfortunate one, and 
our budding sympathy for him is soon forgotten in the risks 
and triumphs of his successor. I ceased to recollect the 
whole category of painful affections, the inevitable out- 
growth of this passion; I forgot the attending sins and 
sorrows, and saw only the lottery wheel of a church fair. 
Surely, I then said, there can be no wrong in this, since 
it is only the machine employed to fulfil a purely religious 
and charitable end. The sin is so highly veneered by 
glistening prosperity and artifice that the hideous fact is 
lost, and a sedulous mental review of the thousand tragic 
scenes enacted on the spot is necessarj'' to withhold one's self 
away from the vampire's talons. Roulette seemed nothing 
more than a mere innocent child's game of chance, or fair 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 239 

raffle, with its revolving wheel and balls, dropping into the 
alternate red and black sockets, but trente et quarante, to 
which one apartment is devoted, is much more serious. It 
is played with cards, and nothing but gold coin is staked. 
It is not so exciting as the roulette, fewer indulge, and of 
these mostly women are seated at the tables; a most deathly 
silence reigns, and the gamers devote their most subtle in- 
tellect to the work. Vast rouleaux of Napoleons and heaps 
of Bank of France notes lay on the tables, and after the 
cards are dealt around twice, the game declared, the money 
is raked in by the croupier and distributed amongst the 
winners. I saw fifty dollars staked, and by some trick of 
betting on the first card dealt, the winner received fifteen 
hundred. 

The Casino is not the only gambling salon of Monaco ; 
indeed, there are numbers of assemblies or circles in all the 
towns and hamlets of the Riviera where baccarat is played 
all day long. Almost every private house and hotel has 
its roulette tables, as they are for sale in the shops as 
plenty as peanuts at our corners. Gambling is the miasma . 
in the air, and to remain in the atmosphere you can no 
more hope to escape the infection than the yellow fever in 
Memphis, or the malaria upon the Pontine marshes. 

Gambling is not the only vice of this chosen district. 
The business of pleasure — and ruin — is studied in its most 
minute details and abstract phases, and all that may con- 
tribute to the enjoyment of man is congregated here. I 
have heard loathsome tales of loose morals and free life 
here ; the lamias, who sweep down in hordes upon unsus- 
pecting youths, and of frequent murders and suicides. Of 
course my limited stay prevented me from seeing any of 
this, but where so much sin exists retribution is inevitable. 
Nemesis is as certain as Satan. 

When Emperor William ostracized Monsieur Blanc and 
his nefarious comrades from Baden Baden, it was here, 
in the corner of Prince Monaco's paradise, that he found 
a sanitary refuge under the French Tri-color. I call the 
occupation nefarious; still is it any more guilty than rail- 
way, stock, commercial, and political speculations? It is 
bolder, but before the Eternal Judge it will not be more 
severely punished than the systematic villauy that is prac- 
tised daily b}^ those who make the food, the comfort, and 
the peace of nations the sport of great corners, the ex- 
cuse for living in luxury upon property not their own, 
and the opportunity to ruin those who invest in their false 



240 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

speculations. Human law justly chastises the g.imbler, 
and the chief of Monte Carlo has massed millions upon 
millions by his organized vice; but there is no human law 
for the rulers who gamble with the lives of their people, 
and slaughter millions in great and useless wars. 



LETTER L. 



*' Heroic guide ! whose wings are never furrd, 
Hy thee Spain's voyager sought another world ; 
What but poetic impulse could sustaui 
That dauntless pilgrim on the dreary main ? 
Day after day his mariners protest. 
And gaze with dread along the pathless west ; 
Beyond that realm of waves, untrack'd before, 
Tliy fairy pencil traced the promised shore. 
Through weary storms and faction's fiercer rage, 
The scoffs of ingrates and the chills of age, 
""Jliy voice renewed his earnestness of aim, 
And whisper'd pledges of eternal fame ; 
Thy cheering smile atoned for fortunes's frown, 
And made his fetters garlands of renown." 

TUCKERMAN. 

Genoa, June, 1878. 

I WOULD not dare to appl}"- the threadbare and hackneyed 
boast of ''La Superba" upon Monte Carlo, and yet it 
might be justh^^ applied to that glittering pageant, and not 
to Genoa. Genoa is dirty, dismal, and dilapidated, and 
though the beauties of Monaco still linger in my mind like 
the pomp of some gorgeous pageant, the first picture that 
met my gaze here as 1 threw open my casement window, 
made a sad and lasting impress; a manacled defile of con- 
victs passing over the railway embankment under my lat- 
tice, from their toil upon the quays, as the Angelus bell 
chimed the evening hour. 

For some miles after leaving Mo :te Carlo, we had the 
fair French landscape about us, and the peddling peasants 
of French Savoy pushing their little wagons of carved 
wooden ornaments and cuckoo clocks over the white 
mountain paths, but after passing the line of the custom 
station, Yentimiglia, Italy was apparent in a general as- 
pect of untidiness, squuloi', and decaj-, which we saw only 



. OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 241 

in the intervals we were upon terra firma^ as our route 
was almost wholly subterranean, emerging from one tun- 
nel only to encounter another. The guide-books say there 
are forty-one tunnels between Monte Carlo and Genoa, but 
it seemed like four hundred to me. As we approached 
many of the Italian towns grape-vines formed the walls 
and canopy of arbors that stretched through green fields ; 
but so close as to disparage this beautiful view were 
crumbling houses, whose fortunes and lineage had expired 
together; manufactories, now only deca3nng shells, and 
sclioolhouses tottering and dismantled. The once ruddy 
frescoes, now defaced by time, appearing frequently upon 
the fagadea of buildings, and Virgin shrines at the street 
corners, told me I was near Genoa, dearly and clearly 
associated with his own country in the mind of every 
American. Of course, the first object I looked for was 
something referring to Columbus, and found it in the 
Piazza Acquaverde adjoining the station. The monument 
of Ghristoforo Golumbo is pointed out by every vetturino 
and cicerone to Americans as the loadstar. 

To me Genoa is depressing in its decline; it seems like 
a beautiful woman reduced to a skeleton — a master intellect 
worn to a thread, — a monarch nodding to his fall; and 
memor}^ reverts with a tinge of sadness to the time when 
this colossal wreck was a sovereign of the sea, powerful in 
her domestic wealth, and strong in her foreign possessions; 
when victories over the Saracens, conquests of the Pisans, 
and prolific trade in the Levant gave her a supremacy that 
even Venice envied; when the great names of Doria, Grim- 
aldi, Spinola, and Fieschi shed a halo over the oligarchy, 
that in the present shines with spectral lustre upon the 
withering city. 

I was not only impressed by its utter dilapidation — 
partly the work of the scythe of time — but by the mould- 
ering, festering foulness universally met with, and as a 
strong effluvium of putrescent vegetable matter, maggot}'^ 
garbage, bilge-water from the vessels, rancid oil from loco- 
motives, the musty rag-shops, and the naked and offensive 
chiffonniers^ floated in upon my susceptible senses, I 
prayed the merciful gods to rain a powerful antiseptic 
down upon this fetid city. 

Through the crooked, labyrinthine, narrow streets — so 
narrow and the buildings so tall that never a ray of sun- 
light penetrates — we came upon the quays, where the 
arches are crumbling to powder. Under these the Italians 
21 



242 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

sell macaroni and pick rags; but under these same colon- 
nades we pushed open a door and ascended the marble 
'stairway of the Hotel Trombetta, formerly the Palace of 
the Admiralty. Spacious dining halls, vast marble corri- 
dors, and luxurious chambers, formed a striking contrast 
to the exterior filth and decay. Through zigzag passages, 
and dark, damp, slimy alleys, where the antique palaces of 
the alternate black and white stone blocks rear their heads 
heavenward, I found the Doria estate, and entering met not 
even a symptom of the outside pollution, but a mansion 
crowned with the glories of Perino del Vaga, one of 
Raphael's pupils. The church of the Annunziata^ though 
the bricks and mortar appear moth-eaten, is as superbly 
finished inside as a mosaic picture or a lady's enamelled 
gewgaw, and to me more beautiful than the Madelaine in 
Paris. Hours could be passed in this highly embellished 
sanctuary, and gladly would I have lingered longer with 
the young Italian acolyte as guide, feasting upon the 
beauties of the superb temple, had not time beckoned me 
away. This is my initial day in the religious tournament 
of Italy. It is a country of churches and a church-going 
community ; everyone who comes here immediately launches 
uj)on the peaceful sea of sanctity; holiness is the infection, 
and we can no more escape it than the gambling contagion 
at Monte Carlo. I do not know whether the Catholic cus- 
tom of keeping their churches open all day and every day 
foslers a moral and powerful population, but it certainly 
has its merits. It is the onl3'' proper way for the house of 
God to be conducted. I never approved the system by 
which supplication and repentance are condensed into one 
conglomerate mass during six days, to be hurled, a pious 
projectile, upon the seventh. Religion should, like love, 
])e an emotion of the heart — an ecstasy; and we should 
seek our God as our sweetheart, at the moment irresistible 
im[)ulse prompts us to sweet communication. Worshipping 
God by routine and wooing by rule are for austere bigots 
only. If we sin on the first day of the week, and upon the 
second or third our soul cries Peccam^ we must bear the 
stings of the still small voice within four more da^^s before 
we may cast our contrite hearts upon the altar of the Great 
Confessor, and it would demand a very tender conscience 
to bleed with the same remorse after this lapse of time. 
And so when Sunday morning shines, the ardor of our 
penitence has cooled ; our heart-scourgings have been 
seared by time and the worldly work ; we veneer one part 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 243 

of onr guilt and forget another, and go our way with only 
a partial forgiveness. There is a prologue of penitence, 
but the wounds are only cauterized, the poison still fester- 
ing at the core. 

If mj' proclivities are Romish, let it be attributed to the 
fact, I entered a convent school at the age of eleven, and 
though my sentiments are far too liberal ever to adopt all 
the precepts of the Church, yet at so early an age the mind 
is placable, quick to receive and slow to remove, and the 
surroundings and teacliings have left their vivid and endur- 
ing colors. 

Genoa is built upon altitudes, and the streets coil round 
and round, until the first, the easiest, and the most frequent 
thing a stranger is guilty of is, to lose himself. There are 
spacious squares and fine stores, but they are the exception. 
The new Mazzini Gallery^ christened in honor of the fierce 
and inspired Italian republican, is the pride of the Genoese. 
It is an exquisite glass-covered avenue, lined by fresh and 
costly establishments, while the half of one side is occupied 
by the new liotel. 

I had heard much of Campo Santo, the picturesque 
cemetery of Genoa, and my first steps were turned towards 
it. I found almost as much food for reflection upon my 
route as in the sui generis necropolis. And of all I saw 
and all I studied, dirt and donkeys were tiie most affecting. 
All along the quays rag hovels — Genoa is the great rai^r 
mart of the world — were plenteous. Dark, foul, half-naked 
men were assorting their tattered merchandise, and baling 
it upon the numberless drays that were to convey it to the 
A'essels. The air was permeated with the fumes of bad 
tobacco and garlic. By a mysterious turn we found our- 
selves in the broad Via Nuova, where the sunlight seemed 
to pour down with treble effulgence upon the white square 
by being debarred by narrow bywa3^s; where the Palazzo 
del Municipio reposes upon an inclination adorned by the 
eternal story of Doge Grimaldi in fresco, and guarded by 
iMazzini in marble. The stairway from the court is one of 
those costly and masterly works that, alas, sadly recall to 
us the art of bygone days, now a soiled vestige of former 
loveliness. In the Council Chamber Columbus and Marco 
Polo are blazoned in gaudy mosaics, and in a room adjoin- 
ing is preserved the violin into which Paganini breathed 
the melodious life that electrified the world. This and two 
autograph letters from Columbus were the only objects of 
interest in the municipal palace. 



244 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

The ladies of Genoa are, as a class, elegant and fantastic. 
The}' have ever been noted for the signal grace of their 
step. Add to this most eloquent beauty of woman, a pre- 
maturely developed, yet shapely form, clear olive com- 
plexion, large luminous ej'es, and a wealth of raven hair, 
that seems a burden to the wearer, in its multiplied coils, 
and you have a model of this attractive province. Then 
their costume is so bizarre and romantic, they look like 
the antique females stepped from the canvas of a Spanish 
or Italian picture, in their rich, brilliant colors, with only 
a filmy scarf of black lace draped about the head and throat, 
and their large Oriental fans. There seem to be fewer 
visitors upon the streets than in any of the other foreign 
cities. I cannot account for this dearth of strangers, but 
I can point out every alien female by her bonnet. 'J'he 
upper classes of the natives' coiffure is only the veil, fast- 
ened on one side by a luscious damask rose or gilt orna- 
ment. 

The shop windows display but one character of jewelry 
— the filagree. There are three species manufactured: the 
pure gold, the pure silver, and the silver with gold facing; 
and every description of bauble for which the female heart 
longs may be found in confused superfluity. These, with 
velvet, are the chief staples, and the prices, compared to 
those at home, are excessively moderate. An exquisite 
set of ear-rings and pin of the pure gold, are sold for eight 
American dollars, a bracelet for twelve, a necklace for six- 
teen, — ranging higher, according to the intricacy of the 
work and weight of metal, while the lower grades depre- 
ciate with the value of the silver. 

Toward the Porta Romana we passed through streets in 
which I feared we might be wedged. Certainly some 
calamity would have occurred had a mule, a man, or even 
a mouse, been encountered. Fortunately neither convey- 
ance nor animal was met. Where either would have sought 
refuge from the contact is still a sealed problem, as there 
were only here and there holes beaten into the hedging 
walls where blacksmiths, tinkers, cobblers, and rag-pickers 
ply their meagre trade. Once outside the gates we breathe 
the fresh air and try to force from our lungs the noxious 
gases that have all but strangled us in our ride through the 
cramped town. Laundresses are beating their linen on 
stones in the Bisagno, whose waters seem insufficient for 
the process. It is a peculiar way these Italian rivers have, 
yielding more pebbles than water. The flow is always 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 215 

scanty, and rolls in its ston3'- bed like the ebbing life of 
some t(n'|)id creature. The poor, pathetic little mules trot 
over the hills and steep passes, their pannier baskets laden 
with every sort of household or personal furniture, vege- 
tables for market, and frequently carrying whole families. 
These beasts, with their hunted, mournful faces, if subjected 
to a phrenological examination, would be found to possess 
the faculty of location in the highest stage of development. 
They take their own route; their master slee[)s upon their 
back in the happy consciousness of perfect faith. At first 
1 believed some poor man to be the possessor of a donkey 
who had acquired this wonderful endowment, perhaps from 
the habit that becomes second nature, and perhaps a heredi- 
tary gift from father and grandfather who had travelled the 
path before him ; l)ut as I passed on I learned it was a char- 
acteristic attribute. All these patient quadrupeds went un- 
faltering over their way; all the drivers were asleep. 

The Campo Santo was a surprise and a pleasure. It 
differs ioto ccelo from an}^ city of the dead I have delighted 
in ; as I have, in truth, an infirmity for ceineteries. Great 
marble corridors or galleries of shelves, reaching from floor 
to ceiling, contain the coffins of the dead, square marble 
tablets, bearing the name and date of birth and death, hide 
the unsightly mural caskets. Long palisades of monuments 
skirt the outer walls, and rising with the terraces on the 
hill are costly tombs and chapels. There seems to be 
enough funeral statuar3'^ upon this burial hill to exhaust 
all the marble quarries of Italy, and offer employment to 
everj' disciple of Phidias and Praxiteles in the Old World. 
Ouh' the lower classes are buried under the earth, over 
each grave a black stick bearing a little black lantern. 

Here in this lovely white and silent city, modern Italy 
shows its inherited genius. The dead are as recent as the 
artists ; and among the first are soldiers and statesmen of 
conceded local fame, while among the last are proved 
masters of sculpture. Many, indeed most of these carved 
effigies have names unknown to Americans, and so also of 
most of those who moulded and finished their forms and 
features Only Mazzini on his hill, recalled the fiery Demo- 
crat, whose life was a great agony for liberty, and whose 
soul breathed its iiicense over all the world — onh^ he was 
familiar to me. 

21* 



246 ncTURES and tortraits 



LETTER LI. 

"O Rome ! my country ! city of my soul ! 

The orphans of the heart must turn tothee 
Lone mother of dead empires ! and control 

In their shut breasts their petty misery. 
"VVliat are our woes and sufferance ? Come and see 

The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye ! 

Whose aiionies are evils of a day — 

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay." 

Byron. 

Rome, June, 1878. 

The impoverished condition of Italy is painfully app:ir- 
ent in the tottering habitations, decaying stations, crum- 
l)ling aqueducts, and broad stretches of barren moorland. 
Last night I passed through some forty tunnels, but 
thanks to Somnus, he folded his peaceful wings about me, 
and I dreamed of triple-action springs and luxurious mat- 
tresses in these dark caverns, only to waken with the 
dawn, and find my cramped limbs and aching head pain- 
fully real in comparison with my happy delusions. 

Pisa was the first station 1 saw in the early morning, 
and 1 thought if J could catch the least sight of the Lenn- 
ing Tower 1 should go on my way contented and satisfied 
that 1 had not vainly climbed its apex, traversed the wind- 
ing ways of the town, and witnessed the reputed sensuality 
of the populace. But not a line of its columns nor a scroll 
of its fretwork gladdened mj^ expectant gaze. A group of 
dusky Italian boys lounged about the platform, and I 
beckoned one to the carriage window. Handing him a 
towel, 1 asked him in French to dip it in water; the boy's 
eyes wandered alternatel3' between the towel and my face 
in blank amazement; then, interrogating me in Italian, I 
comprehended he had not the slightest idea of the language 
in which I was addressing him. I made this discovery 
with some surprise, as it was the first peasant or native I 
had met on the continent not able to speak the polite and 
really standard language of Europe, — and I could not 
master one word of Italian. After a few moments' annoy- 
ing hesitation and silence filled with pantomimic gestures, 
I made an endeavor upon him with the Latin word aqua, 
which was the magic key to his understanding. For my 
brejdifast I purchased a small flagon of wine for ten cents, 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 247 

and a sandwich made of bologna sausage so impregnated 
with garlic that the atmosphere was redolent at once, and 
had it not been for a cold fowl tucked awa3" in one corner 
of my lunch basket, at Genoa, 1 should iiave been obliged 
to go fasting to Rome. 

The Italian railway stations are frequently separated by 
extended stretches of country, utterly houseless and god- 
forsaken. The train often makes a run of three or four 
hours without cessation, and, unlike America, there are no 
luxuries, nor even conveniences ; if you are suffering from 
hunger or thirst j^ou must bear it nntil your necessities 
grow into agony. Then at the first stopping-place, which 
is frequently a little mouldering town, with an offensive 
railway boiiffet, there is a general outpouring of passengers, 
and the slightest succor or relief must be paid foi*. How 
I recalled the splendid comforts of the railways of my own 
country I 

I thought T should be made aware of my approach to 
the Eternal City by certain signs of sanctity, which would 
at once transform me into a devotee of his Reverence Leo 
XIII. Surely this could not be the city of Cfesar and 
Brutus, of Augustus and Trajan, and the great Constan- 
tine. Surely this is not the Rome of Romulus and the See 
of St. Peter, revealed to me in the crumbling aqueducts 
and white cattle knee deep in tlie lush grass of the (Jara- 
pagnian marshes. Where is the glory of the Gracchi, the 
glamour of Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Canova, the 
grandeur of Trajan, and the cruelty of Nero? Oh where, 
where are all these influences and elements that really 
make the sublimity of Rome? I asked myself again and 
again as 1 came through the new quarter of the city, where 
the fa§ades are as fresh and glaring, and life as insougiant 
and youthful as in Paris. 1 vainly looked for some sign 
by which the consciousness of the sacred city might take 
possession of me. Perhaps I sought an emperor in crim- 
son-bordered toga and sandalled feet. Perhaps a legion of 
gladiators, or the early disciples of Jesus. There were 
scores of Capucini and Dominican friars upon the streets; 
but these were familiar objects, and then the}' were all 
either too dirty or too corpulent and carnal to summon the 
ghosts of the past; they were pre-eminently of the present. 

And so ray entree into this Etrurian capital was disap- 
pointing. I had expected its splendor to burst upon me 
like some great meteor of a southern sky. I was prema- 
ture; much that was magnificent, and much that was 



248 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

anomalous, awaited me, l)Ut it is not the order of grandeur 
that oveii)Ovvers by one glory of etfulgence. It is all so uni- 
form in its magnitude that you must grow into and slowl}^ 
a))Sorb it. 

My first steps were not turned toward St. Peter's. It 
was too late in the day; another reason, 1 always "save 
tlie best wine until the last." So after dining sumptuously 
upon rol)in, artichokes, macaroni, prawns, and Lacrima 
Chridi^ in the sweet glow of the dying day, I joined in 
the glittering line of equipages slowly mounting Monte 
Pincio. J should have preferied to walk; then I could 
have studied the curious sti'eet corners, sparkling with the 
spray of fountains, and sacred with the Virgin shrines, but 
] did not know the way, and must submit to vetturino. 
The life I met was as much a vanity fair as Paris, and only 
a repetitif>n of a ride to the Bois de Boulogne. There 
was no fragi'nnce* of antiquity, nor chime of holiness, nor 
gloss of imperialism. No Angelus bells made sweet and 
solemn music; no orisons floated upon the air, no prayerful 
hush upon the place, no peaceful l)enediction to balsa»n a 
bleeding soul, no Te Deum of praise, no genuflexion of 
worship to tell me I was in the city of God. Long parades 
of costly turnouts, with high-stei)pi ng steeds and liveried 
attendants, ostentatious crests, and dark, gaudily-dressed 
women, chaperoning their infantile progeny and nurses 
through the procession. The nurses, as gay as peacocks 
in their gaiish [)lumes, I at first mistook for ladies of some 
high degree of nol»ility, and while I did not admire their 
])omposity of paraphernalia and streaming pink head rib- 
i)r)ns, — I think the })ink pennons are the universal indice 
of this order, — I did regard the republicanism and maternal 
pride with which these grand duchessea bore their own 
children — as I then supposed. 

The Roman matrons do not seek to alleviate nor even to 
spiritualize their essentially earthy faces and forms by their 
mode of dress. Many among the showy community in 
which 1 mingled last night— only the upper-tendom — were 
magnificently beautiful women, but with sensual faces. 
Their charms lie in massive coils of dusky hair, eyes that 
are luminous with the dew of unshed tears, and creamy 
luscious throats. 

We entered Monte Pincio from the Piazza del Popolo, 
where the obelisk of Kamses, with its quartette of guard- 
ing beasts and dancing fountains, crowns the centre of the 
great oblong circle, while the monumental churches, great 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 249 

fonts of leaping water, the gate of the piazza, and lofty 
columns and walls, surmounted by colossal statues of 
Rome, Neptune, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, 
form an unforgotten coronal. 

Passing under the portal, where the seasons blend in 
glorious harmony, we were among the cypress and box, 
ilex and palms, cedars and oleanders, stretches of sward 
and mounds of prodigal bloom. Gods and goddesses, 
heroes of war and conquerors of science, masters of verse 
and victors of art, glance from between the pines and be- 
hind corners of bronze foliage in a state of pitiable decay. 
The strains of the musicians assisted in dispersing any 
gathering shade of sublimity in this twilight retreat of 
stony celebrities; for they were all silent, — the marble effi- 
gies bordering the paths not more so than the flashy groups 
of fashion upon the avenues. 1 left the glittering Roman 
crowd, and again passing the broad piazza entered the 
Villa Borghese beyond the city walls that hedge the park. 
Here there was no pageant of money, nor titles, nor fash- 
ion; no dead emperors nor slaughtered generals gazing in 
marble dignity; but shady avenues, great forests of dense 
herbage, the sweet odor of earth, and a stifled air of purity 
that chastened the spot of all the profligacj' of its Corsican 
Princess, and left only the memor3' of her beauty and 
grace as a hallowing reflection. Still there remains, in one 
of the upper chambers of the palace, the celebrated Yenus 
Yictrix of Canova, modelled from Pauline Bonaparte, 
Princess Borghese. 

The original seven hills upon which ancient Rome rested 
like so many pediments, have now multiplied into as many 
more. Upon any one of these altitudes we see the city, 
with its domes, and spires, and monuments, and ruins, rise 
and fall like the breast of the ocean. Tiiis undulating; belt 
forms an entire girdle to the city, and each summit has a 
special monumental crown: St. Peter's and the Holy 
Prison (?) of the Pope upon Yaticanas; the Franciscan's 
Gardens and a group of villas upon Janiculum, in the dis- 
trict of Trastevere; the Palace of the Caesars upon Pala- 
tinus; the Palace of King Humbert upon the Quirinalis; 
San tana Sabina and several other churches upon Aven- 
tinus; the Basilica of Santa Maria Maojoriore and the Baths 
of Titus upon Esquilinus; the Baths of Diocletian upon 
Yiminalis; and St. John in Lateran at the base of Caelian ; 
and the Mamertine Prison, the archaeological institution 
with arches, temples, and columns innumerable to mythical 
deities and dead empeiors. 



250 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER LII. 

"Or tuniing to the Vatican, go see 

Laocoon's torture dignifying pain — 
A father's love and mortal's agony 

With an immortal's patience blending : — Vain 

The struggle ; vain, against the coiling strain 
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp. 

The old man's clench ; the long evenom'd chain 
Eivets the living links, — the enormous asp 
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." 

BiRON. 

Rome, June, 1878. 

As I rode home from Monte Pincio and the Villa Bor- 
ghese, a few evenings since, the little lamps siione like stars 
in front of virgin shrines at the street corners and over the 
doors, while the great celestial lamps swung in the broad 
dome above, casting more of a carnival tiian a religious 
glow over the Catholic capital. When I woke next morn- 
ing, with the dazzling Italian sun flooding the chamber, 
and tiirowing the rude highly-colored frescoes into blinding 
lirilliancy, the troops of King Humbert were drilling in the 
great square beyond, while the tinkling of church chimes 
made festive the early day. And this double parade of 
soldieis and saintly worship was on the Sabbath 1 I could 
not realize that it was in Home J had slept. 

It is a city for reflection ! '^Rome was not built in a 
day;" this idea flashes upon one through ever}' step of 
experience. Neither can it be seen nor studied in a day, 
and one must meditate, whether he will or not. Every 
moment some aged relic or mouldering ruin rouses a vivid 
recollection ; anything modern in this venerable shadow 
seems a profanation. While I feel old in the presence of 
these crumbling centuries, yet it is what I sought in Rome. 
^ he broad streets, bright new houses, and unfinished Prot- 
estant church, are unanticipated pleasures in Rome, yet 
the only real sublimity, the only inspiration in this capital 
of the centuries, is the mould, and rust, and dampness of 
the antique. Still how lovely the aged city in its ancient 
iioblesi^e, and tattered lazzaroni ; with its souvenirs of 
greatness and evidences of decay ; with the memory of 
ni3rrh, frankincense, and all the aromatic spices of the 
East, and the too offensive odors of the present; with its 
wealth of mediaeval art and hordes of modern disciples. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 251 

Here only do I falter in my strong proclivities for the primi- 
genious. Tlie great names that form a circling halo to 
Roman history are here portrayed, not in the freshness 
and fashion of their day, but with all the impression of 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries upon them. Our eye, 
not inured to primeval art, even at the rugged height of 
its glory, wanders to the modern copies and back to the 
originals, while the treasonous thought creeps in: Would 
these immortal names shine with the same lustre if they 
were of the present epoch, and if they were the product of 
the genius of this magnificent era of scientific discoveries, 
philosophical demonstration ; artistic cultivation, and ar- 
chaeological explorations — in our day, when human life 
and human brains, wealth, and invention are devoted to 
the education and elevation of the masses ; when the world's 
battle-cry is advance ? Is it not only the legendary cloud 
of age that hangs in transcendent ra3'stery around the 
chefs d^ceuv7^e of earlier days? Time, to the untaught 
mind, has robbed the canvas and marble of their expectant 
charms. Are we disappointed because we behold art touched 
hy the despoiling finger of age, because, as he passes on froui 
3^ear to year, he adds a brighter tone to the names they 
bear? The fame that to-day shines only with a wan and 
])allid light, sufficient to illuminate a city, may, in the next 
century, when death has claimed and seasons have hallowed 
it, burst forth a meteor to dazzle and bewilder worlds. What 
a volume to read I What monuments to study! What 
relics to gather, to decipher, and to organize! 

Come through the Piazza di Spagna, where we find great 
libraries of English books, cafes, photograph shops, and 
windows laden with the gaudy scarfs of Roman silk ; where 
the picturesque but soiled models (soiled body and soul) 
recline in artistic costumes upon the great rows of steps 
that lead to Trinita de Monti. From dawn till the sinking 
sun throws his rosy mantle over the hills of Albano, these 
beautiful, luscious, unwashed Roman women swarm in this 
quarter, waiting to be chosen by one of the hundreds of 
students of the vicinity. Glance at them as you pass, then 
come with me to St. Peter's. It is not a temple to be 
visited, but a sanctuary in which to linger ; where we may 
return again and again, and the oftener we come the more 
we shall find to feast upon. It is the one spot to resort 
when the heart is oppressed and the soul craves a balsam, 
there to remain until these holy shadows fold you in their 
sweet embrace. Do not look in when you are hastening 



252 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

toward another monument. That annihilates the entire 
splendors of the effect. \our mind first absorbs enough 
of the great cathedral to be enthralled by its sovereignt3^ ; 
then, when sufficiently filled with its majesty, you are safe 
from the influence of subordinate charms. 

Now come and drink deeply of its imperishable mosaics 
that are as brilliant to-day as they were centuries ago. 
Come linger at the tombs where all the horror of the decay- 
ing bones within is lost in admiration of the statuary on 
the top. In truth the place is a purified charnel-house, and 
we are surrounded by the sarcophagi of mouldering saints 
and vanished popes ; but we see only the deeds of great 
heroes, and the fasting, prayer, and castigations of devotees 
in classic marble. It is not a vault of the dead, but a 
temple of art to keep their memories fresh forever. 

The Piazza of St. Peter's rests upon the inclination of 
the hill. In the centre an Egyptian obelisk, with fountains 
on either side, is dwarfed in the shadow of the great basi- 
lica. Semicircular wings of the temple, in the form of peri- 
styles, a perfect labyrinth of Doric columns and massive 
pilasters, surmounted by colossal statues of saints and 
popes, inclose the square. The interior seems to boast a 
peculiar atmosphere of its own. When the malarial sun is 
scorching all Rome in the porticos beyond, here it is calm 
and cool, even chilly, though never damp. Far up the nave 
men appear like mice, and the wonderful Confession of St. 
Peter, the cynosure of the interior, where one hundred and 
forty-two bronze lamps shed perpetual immortality upon 
the Christ-elected pope, seems only a twinkling star. In 
tlie crypt beneath rest the ashes of the apostle, directly 
under the broad gilded canopy. If you would descend and 
be in the holy presence of the anointed dead you must pay. 
Such favors are not for the impecunious. "Put monej' in 
your purse," as lago tells Roderigo, and all paths do lie 
open. Chapels adorn every nook and nave, chapels whose 
mosaics and monuments apotheosize the names of Michael 
Angelo, Canova, Bernini, Guido, and Sacchi, and under 
whose garlanded and carved arcades, aliens, such as Chris- 
tina of Sweden, who abdicated the throne before she was 
thirty, the Stuarts, and the Countess Matilda, have found 
their last sleep far from the country of their fathers. 

Alas ! the mosaics that we regard as works of artistic 
delicac}' in the dome, hjinging like a great balloon at a dizzy 
height above us, are rude enough upon closer examination. 
But the precious marbles of the altar, the porphyry steps, 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 253 

the lapis lazuli, malachite, and Egyptian alabaster are in 
themselves an El Dorado of wealth. 

May I say that I eiijo^^ed the Vatican Palace, or papal 
prisons, as the holy occupant chooses to term it, still more 
than St. Peter's, or shall I say the pleasure it afforded me 
was more ecstatic than reverential? First came the gigan- 
tic cartoons and frescoes of Raphael, over which. we are 
expected to rhapsodize because they are from the mystic 
pencil of the peerless magician, and the Loggle of Raphael, 
that extends in portico about the upper stories of the 
southeastern wing of the palace. They consist of fifty-two 
biblical themes drawn from Raphael's cartoons, executed, 
with verj'- few exceptions, by his pupils. The pictures of 
the Loggie are not characterized by the same boldness of 
outline and eccentricity of attitude as the great frescoes 
of Jurisprudence, the School of Athens, and Mount Par- 
nassus, but they are more brilliant in hue, and conventional 
in construction. 

In the halls of sculpture we have such a feast that it 
becomes a burden, and we are wont to wish we had not 
dined so profoundly upon the other good tilings spread be- 
fore us. Much that is fine, and much that is fragmentary; 
each has its storj^, and many are the relics of vanished ages 
of which we have nothing authentic. Such grand concep- 
tions as Apollo Belvidere, the Laocoon of Rhodes, the Nile, 
which to me is a still more marvellous piece of art than the 
Laocoon, the recumbent Ariadne on the Isle of Naxos, the 
wonderful Faun, a copy of Praxiteles, — these are lessons 
to be remembered; who, indeed, once having viewed them, 
could forget? Yet in these halls there are multiplied 
statues, sans eyes, sans noses, sans arms, sans legs, sans 
everything — gods and heroes who lost their ph3'^siognomic 
members in the pagan era. Torsos and hermse that would 
require the inspiration of a Phidias to invest with any of 
their original symmetry, yet these are invaluable to show 
the antiquity of art in this vast world of art. Days have 
I passed amongst these marbles, until they became the 
companions of my life, and when at last compelled to leave 
them 1 felt indescribable sadness and solitude. Then I 
could discern the enthusiasm of the sculptor for his stony 
creations, rather than for his living models. As he moulds 
and chisels, he invests his offspring with all the fire of his 
soul, the cunning of his hand, the genius of his brain, and 
the majesty of his ambition. Being finished he loves it and 
22 



254 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

shuns parting with it, because there is more of his life in 
the cold marble than in the vital frame. 

As I pass up the ro3^al stairs of Bernini, the equestrian 
archetype of Constantine seems to frown me down; and 
why? It must be that I passed him so often with onl^'^ a 
glance, ever hastening on to other gods. Now the tapestries, 
then the pictures, again the Last Judgment, and then back 
to the statuary or the papal library. 

The Last Judgment of Angelo in the Sistine Chapel is 
considered the masterpiece of his life. The fresco is in his 
vigorous contortionate style, but the conception is an 
avenging Judge, not a merciful Saviour. Christ upon the 
celestial throne seems to be hurling the offending souls into 
eternal damnation in confused multitudes; his eye is aflame, 
scorching even his mother, who trembles at his side, while 
Mary Magdalene is in an equivocal position of supplication, 
half fearful of farther exciting her Master's wrath; j'ou 
almost hear the un uttered pra^'er for the condemned die iu 
a stifled sob. The upper part of the fresco is filled in with 
soaring figures — the blessed, who have received their testa- 
ment of virtue and are ascending to the golden tribunal in 
happy indiff"erence. The artist has woven a silhouette of 
his life into the picture: the angels have the faces of his 
friends, whilst the sinners are portraits of his enemies, with 
him to whom he bore the greatest hatred as Judas in the 
depths of hell. 

The Vatican library teaches us the opulence, royalty, 
power, and world-wide influence of Catholicism. Not in 
the 80,000 volumes and 24,000 MSS. alone do we read this 
profound truth, but in the sumptuous saloons and costly 
gifts of foreign potentates. Sevres vases from Napoleon, 
malachite timepieces and ornaments from the Czar, Egyp- 
tian alabaster from Mehemet Ali; buhl cabinets and tables 
of rarest Grecian and Italian stones line the great hall, 
where frescoes and gold repousse seem to have had their 
finishing touches overnight. In fact, I fancied I could 
smell the paint, and stood aloof from the pillars and walls; 
and this is only one of the cells in the sacred prisoner's 
dungeon. 

Then the gardens, where his reverence ma}' ventilate his 
ever pious plans, are not a dark and slimy cavern where 
toads do procreate and serpents crawl, but inclosures as 
beautiful and bright as a Parisian pleasance. They extend 
along the declivity of tlie hill, and manifest all the splendor 
of natural and artificial embellishment; the shrubbery' is 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 255 

exquisitely^ trimmed; pedestals and bronzes stand here and 
there; even curious and ingenious water-works surprise the 
stranger, by issuing from invisible apertures beneath his 
feet as he pauses to admire the huge pine cone from the 
mausoleum of Adrian, or passes on from terrace to terrace. 

The manufactory of mosaics within the Yatican walls is 
a catchpenny. I do not intend to intimate that it is un- 
worthy a visit, for to see it is the only way to gain an idea 
of these Catholic workmen and adepts. Even the coarsest 
of their products require pains and time to finish. Thou- 
sands of boxes of tlie enamelled stone, of every hue and 
siiade, are arranged upon the shelves that surround the 
long rooms from floor to ceiling. Tliey are at present em- 
ployed upon the medallion portraits of the Popes for St. 
Paul's in Lateran, or beyond the walls. Each executor has 
an oil picture of the subject before him as a model, and 
watching the process we discover it requires some skill to 
perfect the copy. Now, T called this manufactory a catch- 
penny, because our guide, who is, as I think, even an exag- 
geration of the importunate boring and falsif3nng traditional 
guide, told us it was free to strangers. True, there was no 
charge to enter, but the ransom of deliverance was heavy ; 
every one who opened a door, or turned a picture, or handed 
you a specimen of stone, expected and demanded some of 
the small coin of the kingdom. 

Though not inspired with the same hush of solitude and 
healing rest in the private palace galleries, perhaps I gained 
a more instructive idea of art than in the holy museums. 
Of* course, I went to the Barbarini to hunt out the original 
Beatrice Cenci by Guido, of which the}'^ say all the copies 
that float the universe as thick as flies upon the shambles 
are shameful travesties. I found it amongst a whole family 
of Cencis, and that was a disappointment. Surely this 
brave, fanatic girl deserves a place alone, as the suffering 
heroine of her line, instead of being grouped with step- 
mother, aunt, sister-in-law, and a host of other relatives, of 
whom the world never heard. Perhaps it was done that 
her kin might shine in the reflection of her lustre; but the 
glory of a self-created martyr should not be sacrificed to the 
vanity of a family. There are those whom this sad face, 
lighted by the great pathetic eyes, have haunted a lifetime, 
but I freely confess, and let it be attributed to my ignor- 
ance of art or dearth of intelligence, that it did not impress 
me as deeply, viewing it from the protoplast I had in mind, 
as a little painting I have at home, by no very eminent 
master. Sorrow and suffering are admirably depicted, but 



256 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

there are cold lines about tlie montli and nose, and even 
eyes, that Beatrice, as I conceive the character, never ha(L 
There is fixed purpose and strong determination upon the 
canvas, and these were her ruling attributes. 

Raphael's Fornarina glows with all the magic of her 
lover's brush. It is not a beautiful face, neither is it a face 
of a patrician, but one to be loved; a face of Southern 
warmth and passion and youthful freshness. But all en- 
chantment faded when I heard she was a baker-girl, and 
existed in one of the thousand dark, dirt}'^ little holes of 
Rome, where "/br72o" appears over the door in large text. 
t'^or??o" is the oven, and Fornarina was the young lady 
who kneaded and baked the black bread in yard measures 
for the Italian mass. Yet, through the love of the artist, 
she is immortalized in oil from zone to zone. 

Del Sarto's Virgin more completely fills my conception 
of Mary, at the birth of Christ, than any I have looked 
upon amongst the thousands here. Sacred painting was 
paramount in the halcyon days of art; what else had these 
^early masters as subjects but the Bible and mythology? 
There are some few illustrative of their own lives, but such 
scenes labor under a disadvantnge that biblical ones never 
can contend with ; the former often need an interpreter, the 
latter are read at once. Now Del Sarto draws the Ma- 
donna as a luscious, radiant young female, with the infant 
Saviour upon her lap; all other artists represent the woman 
with the infant, and the woman clinging to the cross upon 
Mount Calvary," thirty-three years afterward, of the same 
age, cast of feature, and with the same expression of weight 
and care; a ph3sical impossibility. 

But there is a small picture, I know not by wdiom, that 
made an ineffaceable impress. So long as life lasts I shall 
see it as I saw it then. Mark it well; it hangs in a small 
salon at the rear of the gallery. No diary nor guide will 
ever be necessary to recall it, for it lingers in my memory 
like strains of unforgotten music — "Orpheus Charming 
Birds and Beasts;" verj^ odd, touching, and grotesque, — 
the listening air and attitude of the captivated cow, the 
hearkening horse, the absorbed owl, the mesmerized mon- 
key, the silenced magpie, the surprised fox, the tickled fish, 
the arrested eagle, the terrified tiger, the languishing lion, 
and even the whale called out from the ocean by the dulcet 
music; the birds stilled in their flight, and the very air list- 
ing among the branches of the trees. When you visit 
Rome seek it, and see and hear this enraptured animal 
world in the Palazzo of the Barbarini. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 257 



LETTER LIII. 

•' In the breathless gloom 
I sought the Coliseum, for I felt 
The spirits of a manlier age were forth ; 
And there against the mossy wall I leaned, 
And thought upon my country. Why was I 
Idle, and she in chains ? The storm now answered : 
It broke as heaven's high masonry were crumbling : 
And the wide vault, in one unpausing peal, 
Throbbed with the angry pulse of Deity !" 

Jack Cade. 

Rome, June, 1878. 

I FOUND the Rome I sought upon the Palatine and Capi- 
toline. Not the holy Rome of Yaticanus, nor the political 
Rome of Quirinalus, but the antique pagan Rome of the 
Caesars. I had thought a visit to the palaces of the Caesars 
was to be the culminating ecstasy of my Italian experience. 
But while I found the mound full of the glory of the past, 
life in the vicinity was lusty with the pleasures of the 
present. The foul, coutracted byways of old Rome were 
thronged with men, women, and children. Dark, dirty 
drowsy beings seemed to be in a slow putrefaction by dint 
of their own sloth and squalor. Their only emi)loyment is 
the animal functions of life, including the exhalation of 
their noxious garlic breath upon the stifling atmosphere. 
The females are beautiful. Though an intense admirer of 
womanly grace, my frenzy is not sufficient to excuse un- 
clean persons and soiled gowns; but these voluptuous 
Roman women possess a fascination of face and form that 
almost cancels their contempt for purity. 

In this southern climate nature matures earlier than in 
our slower nortli. The same sun that causes the orange to 
glow, the cypress and oleander to blaze, and the grape to 
ripen, kisses the human buds into a precocious exuberance 
of bloom. At the age of fourteen we find these girls in 
the full flush of adolescence, but at twenty-five, when the 
flower of life should be most aromatic, they have declined 
into middle-aged, toiling, wasted wrecks. Where do we 
discover one trace of the radiant, luxuriant maid, of the 
sweet, soft shadows about the dusky throat, of the lumin- 
ous eyes and dewy complexion, ten years after in the hard 
face and obdurate lines of the matron, the saffron skin, 
angular form, dull or glaring eye, and furrowed cheek? 

22* 



258 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Their wealth of hair, black as a raven's wino; and lustrons 
as satin, is the only enduring attribute of former beauty. 
And then the babies! The superfluity of babies is one of 
the most impressive features of Italian life. Every woman 
has an infant upon her arm, and two scarcel}-^ older cling- 
ing to her skirts or wallowing at her feet in the gutter; a 
woman minus the infantile appendage would be as great a 
curiosity as the fabled Centaur, Minotaur, or Cyclops. A 
very usual picture in these Latin cities is a scanty door-- 
step, upon which two youthful scions of a plebeian family 
are at work; the second is perched at an altitude overlook- 
ing the former's crown, which he manipulates in the most 
sedulous manner; so 1 was at first nonplussed to which I 
should api)ly the term of " industrious fleas," the hunted or 
the hunters. These urcliins seem to be universally skilled 
artisans in this, the only trade they are taught. And thus the 
soil procreates pollution. In no other country are the con- 
ventionalities of social laws so completel}'' abandoned. All 
that is sweet and sacred in the ties of nature is utterly ig- 
nored. I have read much of the classic dignity of the 
Roman women, but certainly in this community it is an 
unknoM^n quantity. The august chastity of Cornelia, the 
innocence of the 3^outhful Metella, seem to have vanished 
with the un forgotten dead, and only the saturnalias of 
Faustina, the cupidity of Danae, and the licentiousness of 
Messalina, remain as a code and a principle to these mod- 
ern Laidis. Yet, let me say, in this whirlpool of profligacy 
the inherent delicacy of woman stood forth pre-eminent to 
the disparagement of the opposite sex. Never had I such 
a rare opportunity to read the potent parable: A woman's 
vices may be most offensive and flagrant, but there is a 
something that her Creator has placed in her soul — a com- 
mon endowment of the sex — which deters her from sinking 
to the same degree of brutality and vulgarity with her 
burly brothers. 

Such were the life-pictures I saw, and the life-lessons I 
studied. But what of the palaces of the Caesars, the home 
of Caligula, and the house of Cicero ? What of the 
Koman Forum, where great Caesar fell; of the formidable 
Tarpeian Kock, from which Cassius — not the ''lean and 
hungry" conspirator against Caesar, but of the same lineage 
— was hurled ? Ruins all ; a mouldering mass of shattered 
grandeur; — these baths where the voluptuary was wont to 
pass his hours; these temples of false gods where the 
great pagans worshipped ; these triumphal arches under 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 259 

'which the conquerors rode; these theatres where the con- 
suls and praetors enjoyed the wild cruelty of the early- 
sports ; and these prisons where the adherents of Cataline 
perished, and St. Peter languished under the tyranny of 
the savage Nero. 

The remains of the mansions of these Etrurian poets, 
potentates, and philosophers are tiresome, and thougli the 
durability of the earl}^ masonry is marvellously real in the 
foundations of these structures, where time seems to have 
added to the immutability of the bricks and the fixedness 
of the mortar, the high art and enduring pigments of the 
ancients potentially significant in tiie remnants of mosaic 
pavements and the brilliant hues of frescoes, yet it requires 
the fancy of the poet to supply the departed beauty and 
missing members that once gave the scene its sublimity. 
The chambers of Caesar's palace are mere sleeping cribs, 
not so spacious as the bathrooms of our moderate-sized 
houses, and while the artistic adornments in the courts and 
ground-floors were costly, if not chaste, these ancient kings 
had none of the common and continuous luxuries of our 
day. A stroll amongst the fragments of Roman luxury is 
tedious and perilous. The memory of great names and in- 
trepid exploits, the classic odor and empyrean lustre of 
other eras, is shadowed in the heavy pall of death. Ah I 
pitiable the dilapidation of the crumbling, moss-grown, 
mutilated statues, once the embodied virtues and vices of 
a now dead religion ! What are they now? Nor man, nor 
woman, nor thing. Here we find a human trunk, there a 
bodiless head, again a headless face, or a faceless head, and 
so we go searching about the gardens for members that 
might complete one perfect man, where wandered the plead- 
ing Calphurnia upon the fated ides of March, when her 
lord unheeding went forth to fall at Pompey's statue. 

The awe-inspiring Tarpeian Rock, which history in the 
schoolroom, and Byron in the Parlor, taught us was steep 
and 

" Fittest goal of Treason's race, 
The promontory whence the Traitor's leap 
Cured all ambition" 

is another sad delusion. Instead of a lofty and rugged 
vertex, with a raging torrent below, I found a gentle 
mound, against which dwellings recline, the Archaeological 
Institute, and Prussian Embassy gardens stretch around 
in pleasant perspective, with a very dirty, sluggish stream 



2G0 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

drowsing at the base, and a vast quantity of broken soil, 
partly the accumulation of time, and the exhumations of 
the vicinity, filling the surrounding ditch and levelling the 
mighty altitude to an indifferent hillock. 

Home, so overcrowded with the dead is, nevertheless, 
often suffocatingly full of the living, and it has been well 
said of this pagan-Christian capital that although owned 
by the Latins and populated by their descendants, it is 
more thoroughly enjoyed and improved by the French, the 
Germans, the English, and the Americans. 

In strolling through the Palatine, the Coliseum, the 
Pantheon, St. Peter's, the various amphitheatres and cir- 
cuses, I met crowds and coteries of these strangers, some 
with guides and others with guide-books, tracing the in- 
scriptions on the monuments, the old frescoes, and the 
discovered and recovered secrets of the long gone centuries. 
Among these foreigners were sauants, priests, artists, prin- 
ces, and even monarehs, called to Rome by the unceasing 
wonders of the sacred city. The two Napoleons — I and 1 1 [ 
— spent enormous sums in the excavations, even out-rival- 
ling the great Popes, who from the beginning have also 
given time and money to the revelation and improvement 
of ancient Rome. The Coliseum, about which I had read 
and thought so much, was one of tiiose things that tran- 
scended imagination ; it has been painted and photographed 
and engraved, so runs the record, more than any other 
human habitation or edifice, and it has attracted the atten- 
tion of princes and kings and potentates since it was pro- 
jected by Vespasian, and to this da}', covered as it is with 
the dust of over nineteen hundred Christian years, is still 
a fresh wonder of civilization. It was a superb June day, 
but a Roman day with all the drowsy oppressive miasma 
of the Campagna in the atmosphere, when I passed through 
the front court or vestibule of the colossal ruin, where the 
legendary insurgent Thracian refused to meet his brother 
in gladiatorial combat, and where now vendors of cheap 
jewelry stand with great trays of rough mosaic ornaments 
of the ruined hills. 

Althougli the city was bare of visitors, and the hotels 
preparing to close for the summer, I had an opportunity 
to see the majestic ruin under exceptional advantages. 
There is something awful in this mighty space, and even 
if you are not familiar with the history of the ages, you 
are forced to stop and study it for very shame sake. It is 
so vast that although two-thirds of the original edifice have 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 261 

(lisappenred, the materials to build the palaces of the 
Roman nobility having been taken for iwo hundred years 
from its colossal walls, the almost perfect circle that is left 
standing gives you a fair idea of the stupendous whole. 

Nearly ever}'- excursionist or traveller who visits these 
ancient massive structures recites B^^ron. Poor Byron ! 
he is the compelled decorator of most of the guide-books, 
and is sung by the verdant pilgrim from the St. Lawrence 
at home, who makes a vehicle of his poetry when he de- 
scribes Niagara, to the Rhine in Germany, where he 
expresses his ecstasy over that vaunted stream, and when 
he gets to Rome and enters St. Peter's, and the Vatican, 
and the Coliseum, he becomes the involuntary echo of the 
l)oetic pictures of the British bard. 

Upon the Appian Way we see the supposititious si)ot 
blessed by the footprints of Christ, the Monarch of Heaven, 
and glorified by Constantine and the Caesars, conquerors of 
the world, over which they led their puissant armies. We see 
the baths of Caracalla, where the early sybarites lounged 
amid pungent scents and spicy opiates, when perfumes 
were more alluring to the natives than the}^ are to their 
posterity, discussing politics or the latest scandal in a 
prretor's or a consul's family ; so the ihermse were to the 
ancients what the beer saloon and cigar shop is to the 
Sc'ipios, Diomeds, and Claudii of the present. The Cata- 
combs, that completely seton the Campagna, and even ex- 
tend as far as Ostia, are another wicked fallacy practised 
upon the unsophisticated stranger. No doubt they were the 
retreats of the early persecuted followers of Faith when 
Rome was rife with the religious cabals of the first century, 
and no doubt much of the virus rising from the great sterile 
moors is only the poison of these long-hoarded bones in the 
subterranean sepulchres. From the Porta San Sebastiano 
to the right are the great Christian cemeteries; and to the 
left the Jewish, hedged in by walls, marked by a series of 
interstices reseml)ling pigeon-holes. To grovel through 
these narrow, dirty, labyrinthine dungeons, preceded by a 
cadavarous-looking friar, with only the ghostly glearh of a 
puny tallow candle to add horror to the spectral scene, is 
not calculated to inspire poetry or safety. The martyrdom , 
scourging, and dire flagellations of these Christian standard- 
bearers is forgotten in their own fraud and the fright of 
their guests. Winding about uneven paths, stumbling up 
and down crumbling clay steps, peering into little holes 
that once^ perhaps, contained dry and whited bones, but, 



262 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

alasl have been sacrilegiously rifled by visitors in search 
of souvenirs; occasional!}^ having a little incision in the 
wall, near a coffin -shelf covered by glass, pointed out as 
the casket that contains the blood of a saint, caught from 
his wounds while dying, and preserved through tiie centu- 
ries, and while you search for the vital fluid and discover 
only a smear like a soiled finger-mark upon the glass, your 
canonical guide tells 3'ou the rest has evaporated, and then 
vanishes around a corner, some corner, there are so many 
corners you are undecided which one to turn. To follow 
the wrong path will be death; to hesitate will be deatii. 
In another moment our holy friend, curtailed of his fair 
proportions, will have swept another curve, and then the 
wan glimmer is lost forever. We follow in a state of un- 
pleasant and eager expectanc}^, and heave a sob of relief 
when we see the ghastly flame and grim visage. All this 
and more is not the most delectable entertainment, and 3'et 
this "is seeing the Catacombs." We tell our anointed 
brethren we have had sufficient of the repulsive repast, and 
beg to be excused from tasting it further. But we are in- 
formed there can be no retraction; hungry or satiated the 
spectral banquet-hall has been entered; to stop at the 
entrees is not permissible; we must agonize through the 
succeeding courses of blood and bones, dust and darkness 
and clay, to the tail-end of the menu. With these unpleasant 
reflections we are asked to pay for the murderous and cank- 
erous meal, which we do unresistingly, glad to escape the 
further hospitalities of the grim host. He is obsequious 
ui)on rolling our silver in his grimy palm, and importunes 
us to gaze upon a splinter from the Holy Cross and one of 
the Crown of Thorns as a sort of receipt for our pains! 

I have touched the stone that contains the sacred foot- 
prints of Christ when he met St. Peter on the Appian 
Way, but I had to pay for it; and to see the original nail 
that pierced one of his hands at the crucifixion also re- 
quires some liras; these things are not preserved for the 
sanctification of souls, but as so much stock in trade. 

Far out along this ancient bridle path are lines of 
mouldering tombs — these and the broken aqueducts the 
only features of the barren, desolate Campagna. Tombs 
of heroes and royal families, where the humanity interred 
has long since faded into air, but the sculptured figures 
and stone foundations remain to proclaim the immortality 
of art. 

All along the road the workmen of King Humbert were 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 263 

building new ramparts, and I asked why the youthful 
monarch was taking this precaution. If Italy be endan- 
gered, I saw no sign of it. I presume it is the papal 
power he fears, that everflowing font of omnipotence and 
l3igotry. The whole society here savors of the Catholic 
Church. The masses proper are adherents of the Yatican. 
Catholicism is so much capital, and the result is, even 
other religions partake of tlie odor of the Holy Mother. 
Protestantism is a very feeble affair, and as the Roman 
nobility and cardinals hold the keys of the social Sesame, 
it onl3^ opens to obedient worshippers, or generous givers. 

The laborers had ceased work to take their noonday 
meal, as we turned toward a dilapidated farm inn, to take 
a piece of black bread and a flagon of sour wine, under the 
shadow of great trees and upon the greensward, where 
dogs and babies lay sleeping in each other's embrace, and 
Roman women were picking and making their dinner from 
raw peas. The proletaires out upon the road were feasting 
upon their "hard tack" and raw onions, that cast their 
aroma — stronger, though not so sweet as new-mown hay, 
orange blossoms, or tangerines — upon the atmosphere for 
miles. This cepivorous race, patrician and plebeian, feed 
upon the bulb pungent, and subject it to all the intricacies 
of their culinary art. 

An attempt to epitomize the churches of Rome, with 
their thrilling pictures and appending stories, would be a 
wild enterprise. Long I studied the beautiful fresh adorn- 
ments of St. Paul beyond the gates, and St. John, where 
crawl repentant sinners over the Scala Santa, said to have 
been the steps of Pilate's house, over which the suffering 
Saviour descended after judgment. Here the contrite pil- 
grims cringe and creep and go through their genuflexions 
upon each of the twenty-eight steps, and every step grants 
eight hundred 3^ears' indulgence — so I was told. Oh! what 
a convenient and elastic creed! 

And St. Paul's, apart from the tomb of the body of St. 
Paul, — his head lies side by side with his brother evangelist, 
Peter, in the Lateran, — is of singular beauty, with an unu- 
sual abundance of precious decoration, 3'et fresh and untar- 
nished from the hand of tiie artisans, the basilica having 
been reduced to ruins by fire in the summer of 1823. If 
not so vast, it is certainly more compact than St. Peter's, 
and by most travellers considered the gem of Roman 
churches. 



264 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER LI Y. 

" There is a new Rome upon the ruined site, 
A bright and modern metrepole, 
"Where telegraphs and all their kindred light 
Assert the presence of the monopole. 
Low down the Corso will the horse car fly, 
Already newsboys fill the ambient air 
With the wild clamor of their hourly cry, 
And now the bycicle awakes the dusky fair. 
Imperial Rome is rushing to its doom. 
The democratic age is hammering at the door. 
Caesar and Rienzi are in deserted gloom, 
Beatrice Cenci is an ecstasy no more." 

Anonymous. 

Rome, June, 1878. 

Was it not Cicero who said, every fragment of stone 
upon a Roman roadside had its history ? and this was two 
thousand years ago, before the Pagan ravages and the 
Christian innovations. 

To ride along the Appian Way now is like a journey 
through the remembered or written ages. That still splen- 
did avenue is eloquent of the long-gone past, and the Pagan 
and Cliristian time marks may be easily defined. Alas I if 
the iconoclasts had been one-tenth less busy in destroying 
the vestiges of the dead than the moderns have been in 
restoring them, the Ai)pian Way would now be full of the 
marble effigies of the vanished generations. For what is 
left, let us thank the era of the printing press, telegrapli, 
and railroad. Till they came to rule the world and arrest 
the ruin, Rome was becoming more and more the ghastly 
graveyard of the ages. Other capitals have felt the pres- 
ence of the salt that saves the carrion, and Rome has been 
saved to the future by the new-born energy of the nations. 
With one hand this resistless energy has lifted the sinking 
body of the Imperial city, and with the other imparted new 
life into the desolation of death. The Roman Government 
is now vital, active, and full of the fire of enfranchisement. 
The press is free, speech is loud, and Italy has found a 
new call to reform. Even the Catholic Church has gone a 
little into the fashion, and if Rome pervades all Paris, 
Paris makes the clothes and modern arcliitecture of Rome. 

To be in Rome, where Te Deums and anthems float about 
us; where the Great St. Peter hallows lis and carnivals 
intoxicate us; where the story of the Gracchi thrills us 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 265 

and the treachery that killed Rienzl oppresses us ; where 
the greatest fantasies of greatest men are painted on can- 
vas and walls and chiselled in marble ; where we may in- 
voke the blessing and forgiveness of the Virgin at eacli 
corner for our daily sins, and rove conscience free ; where 
the fountains splash and the water-pails clank, and the 
miserable old tinkers mend pots, hats, umbrellas, and 
shoes, in their little dark holes beaten into the sides of the 
wall ; where the art of Phidias, Raphael, and Canova joins 
hands with the work of Story, Rogers, and Miss Ilosmer; 
where we may walk the silent sublimity of the palaces 
where the voices of dead gods speak to us from the choice 
legacy they have left — all this is what thousands before me 
have enjoyed as a sort of matchless ecstas3\ But to be in 
Rome as an artist is something more; it is the supreme 
content of double possession and participation. The artist 
has, therefore, more than an equal ownership in all these 
marbles and jewels with King Humbert or Pope Leo Xlll. 
He does more than either; he contributes of his life to the 
great treasure. 

There are whole streets of art ateliers here, such as are 
to be found nowhere else. The Yia Margutta is a model 
beehive, and here their gods and idols are worshipped in 
oil, clay, bronze, and marble. There are other headquar- 
ters, such as the passage di Ripetta and the Via Babuino, 
but the first is the quarter in which the genii cluster. 
Entering it from the Piazza di Spagna, it is known by the 
efflorescence of its shrubbery; clay powder and marble- 
filings make the portals and leaves as white as the statues 
they hide. The numbers of the residences are cut into the 
gate pillars, and frequently there are four or five of the 
same number in the same street with only the distinguish- 
ing addition of St. 8., or 7 B., or 6% or 7 A. 4° P^; what 
the meaning of this very peculiar mode of designation is, 
except to rob one of his time and amiabilit}^, I have not 
discovered. We were in search of Randolph Rogers — did 
you ever hear of an American who visited Rome and did 
not call at the studio of our courteous countryman ? After 
much talk and pantomime, and a few French words to the 
Italian hackman, and man}'' windings, we found Rogers 
amongst his stony offspring. He greeted us in the front 
court, where Illju-ia's sun burnt the rank grass to its roots 
and the insects droned, and led us into the cool recesses 
of his celestial arbor. Surely celestinl! for who were here 
but the pure and the brave? ^'ydia, the blind girl of 
28 



266 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Pompeii, a bust of a New York belle, a bust of his own 
little daughter, and the Lost Pleiad, are his proudest 
achievements. The latter is represented in her descent 
from the golden throne, after having fallen in love with a 
mortal; her limbs float upon air as she turns to gaze back- 
ward and upward upon her six sisters in their heavenly 
zone, while her little hand is raised to shade her eyes from 
the lustre of their virtuous effulgence. 1 rhapsodized upon 
the graceful curves, purity of tone, and the ethereal expres- 
sion of her wondrous eyes, almost as potent and speaking 
as mortality. Looking at this fair vision again and again, 
the exquisite perscmation of an enchanting fal>le, the master 
smiled at my enthusiasm, and in his own na'ioe way he spoke 
of her as "the young lady who lel't her old maid sisters in 
Elysium to follow her hubb}^" My dream was dispelled, 
the haze of romance faded, and I saw only the satire in 
marble. Thus in life do our sweetest delusions vanish ; 
our gods are dashed from their pedestals by the jest of the 
minute, and we find the clay hollow and filled with vermin. 

I repeat, who would not be a sculptor and live in Rome, 
and pass his life in one of those cool, quiet, shady sanc- 
tums, among his own creations? And though the reward 
be worldly', hiave the remuneration of gold, as well as glory. 

But where do the nobility reside ? This has been my 
constant self-interrogation. I do not mean the Corsini, 
Doria, Borghese, Barberiui, and other noted palace-owners ; 
if they have left an opulent posterity, they inhabit a por- 
tion of the old castle, and magnanimously open the galleries 
to the public. If their fortunes have decayed, or the family 
is extinct, the property becomes the home of one of the 
foreign ambassadors, or wealthy Eniglish or Americans. 
Nor do I refer to the ro^'al residences in the district of 
Trastevere, Palestrina, nor upon the Sabine hills. I never 
dreamed that these lofty, spacious structures, with the 
jail-like grated windows, and cow or mule stables occupy- 
ing the ground floor, were the mansions of Italian noblesse. 
Yet so they are. Once having made the discovery 1 rapidly 
grew familiar with the sight, and learned to look beyond 
the stalls of animals, and heaps of deca3^ed vegetables, into 
the cool shade of palace-courts, where crystal fountains 
drip, and greensward and gay flowers light the picture ; 
while ilex and palms wave tiirough the atrium, in the per- 
spective. The Romans, vvrhile pei-fectly insensible to nox- 
ious odors, are keenly alive to aromatic essences ; they live 
in stench below, and glory in perfume above! 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 267 

The Mole of Adrian, lonor the papal stronghold, is only 
interesting to me as tlie prison of the yonthful Beatrice 
Cenci. It is a great circular citadel, entered from the bridge 
of St. Angelo, guarded by archangels, and has served as a 
fortress for St. Peter's, a tomb for ancient emperors, a 
seclusion for ecclesiastical insurgents, an appendage of 
ro3^alty, a retreat for the popes, the scene of many a satur- 
nalia in the tenth century, and, in fact, an epitome of 
Roman history from the second Christian period to the 
present. To visit such a tower teaches us that the title of 
ruler in the ancient monarchies was often a brevet. These 
Italian dukes were many of them, tyrants fearful of their 
subjects. The walls of this fort are forty-five feet thick, 
v^hile here and there along the stairway narrow windows 
pierce the depth of stone, through which the light strug- 
gles. And this precaution the Emperor Adrian took to 
protect his body, living or dead, from his foes. But the 
romantic and hallowins; influence is that of Beatrice 
Cenci, who languished in one of these cells. We yield our 
sympathy to the murderess, not the murdered. Who, with 
those haunting eyes upon them, and the fresh memory of 
her sweet girl's strength and wrongs, could class her as a 
parricide ? There are some tragedies better than some 
texts ; some sins cancelled by a holy logic, and hers was 
of them. The sluggish stream that washes the base of the 
Mole is the same that our school books describe as the 
turbulent Tiber. The river is a corresponding link in the 
chain of ancient Roman reminiscences. Like the commu- 
nity of the Palatine and Capitoline it crawls in its putres- 
cent bed foul as the rotten shambles on its slant shores. 
Commerce repudiates it, infection rises from it, and dogs 
make it their grave. Oh ! spirit of the great Galileo, inspire 
these instructors of the youthful mind in our academies, 
and let the truth be told of these Roman ruins ! And this 
is the fierce rolling Tiber! 

Near to the Castle St. Angelo is the house where Raphael's 
presence still hangs a sanctifying influence ; not the grander 
residence where he died, nor the walls that tell the story 
of his love-life in the suburbs, but the casket with which 
he invested the chapel of his sarcophagus in the Pantheon I 
At whose tomb I bartered for spicy pinks with a dusky 
Roman boy, and then looked upon the altar where rests 
the late soldier monarch, Victor Emanuel. The marvel- 
lous canopy of the Pantheon is a sort of one-eyed giant, 
through which the dews of heaven fell for centuries upon 



268 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

pagan idolators and Christian worshippers, and the sun of 
God penetrated as if to light the way for the Saviour of 
the world. 

St. Marie Maggiore, sacred crown to the Esquiline sum- 
mit, is the most beautiful of all the Virginal dedications of 
Rome. You ascend the height from the street of the Four 
Fountains. If the day be torrid, as it was when I attempt- 
ed it, stop at an intervening cafe and get some gr^anite 
(Roman ice-cream), then continue your way along the 
dusty eminence. You will meet a number of very pretty 
girls, who have been at their orisons, with excessively dirty 
men, who exhale a cogent decoction of perspiration and 
garlic. An iiged woman, crippled and indigent, debars 
your entrance, with a flaming tongue — not sword — and ex- 
tended arms, until she drops her knitting and hobbles to 
the portals to hold aside the great swinging curtain of 
Canton matting. If you are not in a remunerative mood 
as you pass in, a shade of disappointment appears in her 
old eyes ; that is all. You enter to find a temple of precious 
gems and holy marbles, pontifical tombs, saintly shrines, 
and ro3'al chapels, of which the one bearing the Borghese 
arms is the radiant star, and 3^ou gaze at the mosaic pave- 
ment beneath, and the brilliant adornments above, until 
3'C)u yield to the holy peace of the hour, and kneel to pray 
with the laborers in their noonday prayers. I am impressed 
by the wealth of the Catholic Church, the sincerity of its 
devotees, and its increasing power. There can be no such 
thing as permanent Protestantism in Italy. But what 
touches me most is the equality- of their discipline. The 
countess, in her silks and jewels, kneels side by side with 
the dirty lazzaroni^ and dips her dainty hand into the same 
chalice of holy water where he plunges his filthy fingers. 
The scrub-girl comes in with her bucket and brush to thank 
her Holy Mother for her kilo of black bread, and miladi 
supplicates forgiveness for her petite faute. 

As you make 3^our exit there stands the female St. Peter, 
guarding the holy entrance ; she scrambles from her haun- 
ches and again makes a plunge for the curtain, which she 
snatches, and throws obsequious genuflexions around you 
in a circle ; then, if 3'ou be still of an uncompensating turn, 
or if small coin does not fall like a shower into her leather 
palm, the flaming tongue hurls scathing curses upon 3'our 
otlending soul, and scorches 3^our charity into a cinder. 



OF FOKEIGN TRAVEL. 269 



LETTER LY. 

" Of snckclotli was thy wedding garment made ; 
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes." 

Byron. 

Rome, June, 1878. 

Ye who have not lived in Rome know notliing of popery; 
the power, the magnificence, the processions, the societies, 
and the troops of black cloth filling the streets. They are 
either medicants or opulent churchmen, the former dirty and 
unshaven, the others well dressed and supremely well fed. 
A beaming smile of courteous familiarity greets me wher- 
ever I meet one; none present an appearance of severe de- 
privation, unless of soap and water in the case of the first. 
The brown hair-cloth gown and cowl, sandalled feet, and 
huge rosaries of the Capucini, the black frocks of other 
orders, the gayer dress of papal dignitaries, and the fan- 
tastic costume of His Holiness's Swiss Guard, look like a 
scene from one of the early passion or mystery plays. The 
Catholic religion in Italy, especially in the capital, is a 
great trade, a system of profit for the priests, a world-wide 
drama, a direful delusion for the poor. Of the tens of thou- 
sands of ecclesiasts how few do any work beyond what they 
call worship, and how much they demand of the fold in 
matters of faith, charity, and doctrine 1 Whenever we meet 
one of these he is eternally counting his beads or murmur- 
ing his aves^ and though he gracefully salutes his comrades, 
and smiles upon the . stranger, the sacred hum is uninter- 
rupted as he seems to have transcended the point where 
foreign elements may prove a distraction. All religious 
celebiations and festas are frolics. Ostentation and fun 
transform sacred ovations into saturnalias and jubilees. 
And though the kingdom is now divided into two great 
powers, the Pope in the palace of the Yatican, and young 
King Humbert in the palace of the Quirinal, each having 
his own court, still there is a potential and pervading in- 
cense of the former, and to-da}^ the intrigues of the Church 
exceed those of the State. 

The city is at present floating in a sea of glory in honor 
of the political triumph of united Italy; but in this cere- 
mony the Pope and the cardinals will take no part. While 
the Castle of St. Angelo will be bathed in a phosphores- 
cence of splendor and victory, the church dignitaries will 

23* 



270 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

liide their liolv heads under their blessed tojras for fear of 
being contaminated by a glimpse of the lustre. But the 
Pope has a hundred jollifications to every one of the king's, 
thus strengthening himself so much per cent, in the hearts 
of the masses. The community is fond of merry-making, 
and no community so much as the Catholics. Therefore 
he who otfers or affords them the most amusement is mon- 
arch , if not nominally, in reality he is the worshipped god. 

The more I linger amongst the papists so much more 
readily do I comprehend their world-wide influence. Their 
ceremonies are impressive and dramatic, their temples 
soothing, their religious rites venerated more by spectacle 
than by study, and the masses are universally ruled through 
the medium of the senses. 

Certainly the Catholics have man}^ ways of conquering 
converts. They lay all manner of customs under tribute, 
and they excel in the glory, the gory, and the ghastly. 
They deal in blood and thunder; they flourish in robes of 
crimson and gold, and literally revel in bones. The boniest 
rei)ast offered in Rome is the Capucini Convent, a collec- 
tion of petrified corpses, and a vast crypt of centuried 
dead. Fancy your ancestors laid out in their cerements on 
tl»e cellar shelves; their bones only remaining, all flesh and 
former resemblance fled, and each man labelled with his 
proper name. There are the grim and grinning skeletons 
ticketed and standing in their places just like a chemist's 
bottles or a student's books, and you have only to inquire 
to discover wliether the dried anatomy at your side was a 
Roman republican or imperialist; a man of the town or of 
the ton ; or at least 1 so thought till 1 was quietly informed 
that many of these bony gentlemen had been cured for 
several hundred years, and their names had died or dried 
out with their flesh. There is ever somethinor hideous in 
death, and 1 endeavored to be as nonchalant amongst these 
well-ordered and silent vertebrae as the priest beside me, 
but 1 confess 1 had just a scintilla of poor Juliet's emotion 
when she conjures up the ghosts of her forefathers in their 
festering shrouds all about her in the tomb of the Capulets. 

Several attempts were made before gaining admission to 
the Capucini Convent, cresting the undulated mound of 
the Piazza Barberini. We had been advised never to leave 
Rome until we had walked the Bone Gallery. The name 
inspired horror, and though I had passed the ordeal of the 
Catacombs with considerable trepidation, I went undaunted 
up to ^'old rawhead and bloody bones." 1 hesitated at 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 2H 

which door I should knock, as they all seemed to be barred 
ill a hermetically significant manner. 1 mounted the main 
flight of steps ascending from the piazza; after a prolonged 
and arduous encounter with the bell-handle and brass rapper 
which I attacked alternately-, one of the friars made his 
appearance behind the great door and communicated with 
us through the shifting panel, I demanded entrance in 
Frencli, and he answering in Italian, consternation ensued; 
from what words I imagined I understood, and his expres- 
sive gestures, I felt assured he was endeavoring to convey 
that one of the rules in their code was to admit males only. 
And so we parted, he seeming relieved by my taking my 
shadow from off his door, and I indignantly murmuring 
contracted misogynist, as 1 walked over the broad square 
and stopped to chat with one of the vegetable huckters who 
had her sparse store spread upon the arid, dusty ground of 
the piazza, where market was being held ; and what a mar- 
ket! No stalls, no counters, no covering; the sun pouring 
all the flood of his fire down upon stock and traders; with- 
ering the vegetables, melting the fish, wearying buyers and 
sellers, and stupefying the poor old mules that were hitched 
to the garden wall of Barberini Palace. My dusky commu- 
nicant of doubtful erudition, told me ladies were admitted; 
however, my patience exhausted and temper ruffled, I sup- 
plicated no further that day. 

Next morning 1 consulted the clerk at the hotel, and re- 
lying upon his information, started upon the visitation of 
skulls and skeletons again. I went to the same great door 
at which I had played one of the characters in the panto- 
mime before. I was now greeted by a younger, more ac- 
complished, and placable brother, who directed me in the 
Gallic vernacular to apply at a side door, where 1 was re- 
ceived by one of the holy order, who addreesed me in sur- 
prisingly clever English, but was a walking personation of 
uncleanliness. This confederacy is regardless of the old 
aphorism, "cleanliness is next to godliness." They have 
acquired the chiefest virtue and pay no heed to subordi- 
nate ones. 

]t was a wonderful and ghastly spectacle, this gallery of 
bones, where over six thousand skeletons of the monks of 
the fraternity are arranged in curious devices and emblems 
to ornament floor, ceiling, and side walls. Mantel-shelves 
of bones sustain crosses and other sacred desio;ns made 
from the smaller parts of the human anatomy. Hanging- 
baskets and swinging-lamps in ,every variety of fantastic 



272 ncTURES and portraits 

sliai)e are suspended from the ceiling, which is frescoed and 
stuccoed in the most ingenious patterns with the bones of 
this sickening sepulchie. Many of the dead were laid 
upon shelves in their grave-clothes, the shrivelled skin on 
their bony hands, and the beard still clinging to their 
fleshless chins, while others peered at me from the corners, 
where they stood staik upright ; some posed against col- 
umns or brackets, and some were still in their narrow beds 
of clay. The last of these strange interments has taken 
place for the last time. No more will a Capuchin trans- 
form his unoffending brother into a lamp, jardinier, shield, 
anchor, or star. No more will one poor old friar be ex- 
humed from his cold bed of earth for a brother usurper to 
rest in his couch, while the former undergoes the embalm- 
ing process, only to appear after a time in some grotesque 
shape. By a wise decree of Victor Emanuel the horrible 
and inhuman practice was forever prohibited in 1870. 
This charnel-house was as clean and sweet as a lady's 
boudoir, and I inquired what deodorizer or acid they made 
use of, and marvelled at the answer, ''•none." I discovered 
my condemnation of these good men as misogynists was 
unjust, as our courteous guide told us they had entertained 
a lew months previous several nuns from America, who 
were visiting Europe. This led to a pleasant little confab 
of my experience with the religeusen of my schooldays, 
and when I left the tabernacle of death I felt nearer to the 
dirty cloisterer, who looked as if the use of water had 
been tabooed in the monastery. As we were about to 
make our adieu the monk quietly' repeated, they were abso- 
lute mendicants, and lived only by the charit}' of visitors 
and alms begged on the streets of the Imperial City. This 
language needed no interpretation, so we filled his palm 
with pennies. 

A mil generis pageant certainly, and one to be remem- 
bered long after the moie romantic have faded into oblivion. 
I lingered here, arrested as it were, by a fascinating awe, 
not with the ecstasy 1 had dwelt upon the graceful shapes 
of the marble galleries, the very names of whose authors 
have been obliterated from the memory of man, and into 
whose dreamy eyes I have gazed until 1 wished their stony 
lips would open and reveal the lost story of their origin. 

But the streets of Rome ! Here indeed are food and 
refreshment for the student. I had thought the libidinous 
customs of these people, so unequivocally laid down in 
the pagan classics, a fable, or, if not, so ambiguous that at 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 2t3 

least the degradation had evaporated with idolatry. Not 
so. The manners of the masses to-day on the public high- 
ways are little better than the narrative of Petroniiis in 
the Satyricon^ whose lines lose all the fascination of equivo- 
que in their disgusting details. 



LETTER LY I. 

"In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains, 
Across the charmed bay, 
Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains 
Perpetual holiday." 

John Greenleap Whittier. 

ISTaples, June, 1879. 

Irresistible as the impulse maybe for an enthusiast to 
repeat the melodious lay of our sweetest singer, the la- 
mented Buchanan Read, when looking upon Vesuvius, 
Naples, its azure bay, and still more mystic islands, I am 
quite determined not to impose the harmonious measure 
and topographical exactness of these musical lines upon 
my unoffending friends, though it is the song of my heart. 
Not alone do I refrain from public declamation because the 
theme is hackneyed, but to me a more humiliating reason: 
with all the assumption of ignorance I read the exquisite 
verses of "Drifting" once to a maestro of English, and so 
bitterly did he criticise my elocution that I made a grave 
for my favorite deep in my heart, where it still remains. 

Who would not feel sad at leaving Rome; and who would 
not thrill with pleasure at beholding Naples? The crum- 
bling disjointed arches of the aqueducts, straddling over 
the Pontine Marshes, and the white cattle knee-deep in the 
rank herbage upon these death-breathing swamps, is a pic- 
ture nowhere else to be found ; and while we linger upon 
the archaic and Oriental scene we mourn over the decay and 
desolation of this wide waste of uninhabitable country. 
Yast stretches of pestilential soil, where not a human 
abode is seen nor a mortal voice is heard, are the ghastly 
features of the landscape for many miles after quitting the 
Holy See. To the left the peaks of the Yolcian range are 
often crested by convent turrets, while at the base sweet 



274 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

vales and luxuriant vineyards blossom ; far away to the 
right the infectious moors extend to the sea, within whose 
islands we find all the romance of history and mythology. 
The approach to Naples is indicated by the groves of fiery 
pomegranates, contrasting with the lighter and darker 
aureate tones of the orange and lemon ; and the opulent 
plantations where the dusty olive trees are garlanded by 
the coils and wreaths of the purple grape. When the day 
is fine the waving plume of Vesuvius may be seen long be- 
fore tlie train traverses the fertile district of Capua. What 
3'ou at first mistake for a cloud gradually reveals itself as 
the graceful feather upon the mountain brow; couched as 
it is upon the dome of heaven, you can barely decide 
whether it is a visitor of the upper or lower realms. Out 
in the Mediterranean are the haunts of banditti and the 
legendary rendezvous of the nymphs. The elysium to 
which Circe allured her victims is not the only weird in- 
fluence of the shores of southern Italy. There are the 
caves where the sirens sang; the strongholds where con- 
victs are prisoned to-day ; and the isolated isles where out- 
raged fathers and husbands banished their wives and 
daughters, some to seek repentance, others to find repent- 
ant deaths; the plains over which Fra Diavolo roamed, 
and, indeed, there seems to be little either authentic or 
legendary in the story of Illyria but what adds new beau- 
ties to the garland that hangs over this maze of islands. 
We seem to have transcended the limits of earth and live 
aujidst fabulous charms, with the memoirs of deities float- 
ing about us in a sea of song, and a glory of blue waves 
and crystal grottos, over which white-winged skiff's drift 
and dip; where the golden glow of sunlight pla3^s upon 
high rocks and finds its image in the almighty mirror be- 
low; where a riotous magnificence of color blends in a 
marvellous mist of incense from shore to shore; where the 
wild heights of Ischia, the rocky coasts and watchfires 
of Capri, and the chimes of Ave Maria are heard through 
the rocked-ribbed galleries of Amalfi, who would not yield 
to the dolce far niente of the place and time? Tlie nest- 
ling isles, rocked in the caressing seas and protected by 
the filmy coronal of haughty Vesuvius, need no Bourbon 
empire nor omnipotent church, no universal commerce, not 
even the classic art of early times, to gild their natural 
splendor. Here in the rags of lazzaroni and the wild 
fisher's odorous skirts, the rot of ages and the darkness of 
poverty and ignorance, the Immortal Architect has painted 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 216 

and illuminated the great picture with his own eternal 
pigments. 

Naples is a genuine seaport. Everj^ description of man 
throngs the depot; the Turk with his long tinselled toga 
and crimson cap is there, so that not only a cosmopolitan 
but an Oriental odor pervades the town. As I rode to the 
hotel great loads of wilting vegetables were heaped upon 
the quay, where vessels were depositing their varied stores ; 
bordering the parapets of the Chiaja are parterres of gay 
flowers of rudd}^ southern cultivation ; half-nude men and 
bo3^s lounge indolently in the public roads, over which the 
heights of quaint houses throw their shadows, — houses 
that seem jammed up, one against the other, and one on 
top of the other, without any regard to comfort or appear- 
ance, with great curtains of gaudily painted matting float- 
ing from the windows, from which are stretched clothes- 
lines, adorned with the motley apparel of the family. So 
tattered were these habiliments that it was an impossibility 
to distinguish the original shape or sex of the garments. 
I marvelled how they stood the abluting process, and how 
they were to be worn, and who wore them ? The foreigners 
are tthe only well-dressed people I see, excepting the cab- 
men and priests ; the nobility I do not see at all ; and the 
masses upon the streets seem to have donned a costume 
man}'- years ago, how long I could not sa^', as the greasy, 
clinging fragments seem never to have quitted the body 
that claims them since first tiie work of decline began ; the 
dress has grown old and soiled with the individual ; they 
are part of one another, and once isolated, like parted 
lovers, never again could enjoy graceful and melting ad- 
herence. The poor little donkeys are as shaggy as their 
masters; and so with the overwrought beasts and slothful 
attendants, there is an air of sadness and laziness all 
round. 

The Neapolitans all ride. Perhaps carriage-hire is 
slightly lower in Rome, but in Naples it is a confession of 
shameful penury not to patronize the hackmen, and a very 
frequent sight is the little one-horse public calash laden 
with young women and men, bonnetless and hatless, on a 
holiday frolic. The country people possess a weird little 
donkey to carry their produce to market, and often har- 
ness an ox and a horse with their surefooted quadruped, 
or debasingly yoke the mother of the family with the beast 
of burden, while a great, torpid, lazy husband stretches his 
larded length upon the wagon. 1 noticed female car-con- 



276 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

dnctors were universal, and ladies promenade the Strada 
di Roma (the Neapolitan Chestnut Street) without head- 
covering, their bosoms quite bare, and while this is the 
prevailing mode it has a startling appearance to the cir- 
cumspect American, who never crosses her threshold un- 
less her charms be hidden almost as sedulously as the 
Turkisli dame. 

Tlie greatest expense and most nefarious extortions in 
Italy arise from tlie transfer of baggage. All must be paid 
extra for, as no appurtenances are conveyed with the pas- 
senger or included in his fare of transportation. Every 
package is weighed at the station and a heavy duty levied. 
Upon no consideration whatever allow your baggage to be 
expressed in advance. When we tried this plan from Nice 
to Rome we were sadly swindled. After having stopped 
at several intermediate cities we arrived in Rome, found no 
trunk, and after telegraphing for three days, living in 
anxiety, going through an endless red-tape process, and 
l)nying fifteen dollars^ we obtained our one trunk. The 
question in my mind was, had it not been more comfortable 
and economical to buy a new equipment ? 

Our hotel on the Strada Chiatamone is one of those new 
palatial structures that looks as if it had been placed by 
some enterprising Yankee to teach old Ital^'' a lesson of 
cleanliness. Exquisite reception-rooms, garnished in blue 
and gold frescoes and furniture, with just a dash of Pom- 
i)eian drawing to glorify them. A dining-room that seems 
to have had the plasters and pigments of the buried city 
transported toto coelo. An apartment that might have 
proudly dined Agamemnon, had it not been debased by the 
discordant voices of travelling magpies, at table debate. 
Those who have never suffered the plague can neither 
sympathize with nor conceive the affliction of those mor- 
tals who have waded through the trying and seemingly 
endless slough of table d^hote. 1 am not going to assail 
my own countr^'women in this paragraph for their shrill 
loquacity, the usual wail of such a chapter. While I often 
shrink from the wordy and emptj'^ babble in which they in- 
dulge, seemingly more for the parrotlike pleasure of hear- 
ing their own chatter and regaling others by a disi)lay of 
their ignorance than because they have something in their 
hearts clamoring for utterance, yet, let it be said, the most 
indecent manners at table I have noticed have been those 
of foreigners. I think some of the Italian and German 
Hebrews are the worst. If an American girl laughs too 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 2*7*7 

often, or has not toned her voice to the low sweet contralto, 
these at the worst are slight imperfections; but women 
who extend their bodies half over the board in pursuit of 
food, or who ask you to pass them the ice you have ordered 
(ice is a luxury here) and do not return it, or who freeze 
your marrow in your bones by using a toothquill at table, 
such people deserve expulsion from delicate society. The 
levity of the Yankee may be condoned ; gross indecency 
never! But this table d^hote^ with the high-sounding name 
and bombastic bill-of-fare, is a horrible delusion, a bitter 
snare. A glimpse at the hall previously, assures you that 
the tables are laid in their candelabras and crystals, flowers 
and fine linen for a banquet ; the head waiter, who does 
nothing but superintend the laying, is importunate to know 
if you will dine idhle d^hote ; he exhibits the menu, and you 
at once yield to the ostentatious showing. The dinner 
generally lasts an hour and a half; it is served in courses, 
each course being separated into limited portions, so that 
the sparse supply meets the end of the circle; no individual 
is permitted a second instalment of the food he prefers, 
but must continue in the routine of the programme, whether 
the succeeding dish be palatable or not. This then is the 
first direful disappointment, — the meagre supply and va- 
riety of dishes, — but not the worst for me as I enjoy a 
diversity and am content on little, but the gross humanity 
around me gives no Apician flavor to the feast. There are 
occasions when delightful little symposise may be enjoyed 
in this manner, but such cases are the exception. 

^ight approaches, and I sit upon the piazza projecting 
from my window, where the placid Yesuvian bay expands 
far away to meet the horizon ; pale Cynthia sheds her silver 
rays in a band of jewelled splendor to my right, where 
dance the little cutters and brigs upon the star-lit phos- 
phoric ripples. The lights are coming out one by one in 
the white fisliing cottages on the delta of Posilipo, jutting 
far out into the bay. The equipages of the Italian nobility 
drawn by high-stepping mountain-trained chestnuts are re- 
turning from their evening jaunt to the Yilla Nazionalle 
along the Chiaja, while the shadows deepen and the column - 
of white smoke on the volcano fades into night. Under 
my window the natives lounge, some threadbare, more 
ragged, and many stript of clothing, such a scene as I 
never beheld in any other city; yet no note is made of 
these vulgar customs. The boys play marbles and spin 
their tops, as ours do at home, clothed in only Nature's 
24 



278 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

apparel; the men — dirt}", brawnj^, disgusting men — pitch 
pennies, a sort of mild gambling, upon the wharves ; the 
l)riests, in long black cloaks and shovel-hats, guarding 
their acolytes, enjoy the beauty of land and climate vouch- 
safed to them, heedless of the despoiling morals of the 
inhabitants ; then comes a mendicant Capucini over the 
scene as the last light of day fades and the white featlier 
of the fiery monster is now a lurid flame. Our ardent 
friend on the opposite curve of the horseshoe manifests 
signs of uncontrollable irritation; whether he is preparing 
to belch forth new worlds and destroy old ones, or whether 
this deep growl is only one of his playful antics, I am all 
anxiety to learn. The natives expect an exhibition of dan- 
gerous temper from the fervent symptoms of their good 
friend, and I hear the liquid Italian tongue weaving a 
pra^'erful solicitation lor the happy event into the evening 
Ave. Happy, indeed, to this penurious, speculating com- 
munit}', as such a grand denouemevt would attract myriads 
of strangers to their city, and thus oflfer a fresh and extended 
field for plunder, from which the professional beggars and 
sharpers always garner rich harvests. 

A crimson column of flame is issuing from the crater, 
accompanied by bursts of stone in intermittent periods, 
when the whole mountain assumes a turbulent, angry 
aspect, while the glare blazons upon the purple peaks of 
rock far out in the bay. Vesuvius is not so large, neither 
in height nor circumference, as I expected, yet it stands a 
conspicuous and distinct feature against the clear sky. I 
deem it indeed a special dispensation of nature that this 
supreme incendiary should fete me while in Naples witli 
one of his magnificent pyrotechnical solemnities. I may 
visit and revisit the spot, but will I ever see this petroleuse 
disgorging fire and ashes and lava as I have seen it spit 
forth to-night? so vivid is it all I fancy I hear the retch of 
ejection as the flaming food is vomited from the tempestu- 
ous stomach. 

As dawn spreads her rosy wings over earth the agonies 
of the burning mountain subside; the meteoric ravings 
have died with the parting night, and the white feather 
waves in the gentle breeze of the new-born day. The celes- 
tial curtain is gradually furling behind the crater, where 
the background is a scarf of delicate variegated hues as 
soft as silk and as fleec}^ as Indian tissues, with here and 
there the sparkle of a tinsel thread; such a mantle as 
Cupid folds about his victims while leading tliem in ecstasy 
on to the engulfing stream of fire and lieuzy. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 279 



LETTER LYII. 

" With Pompeii itself at the distance of a few miles— the sea that 
once bore her commerce, and received her fugitives at his feet — and 
the fatal mountain of Vesuvius, still breathing forth smoke and fire, 
constantly before his eyes !" Bulwer. 

Naples, June, 1878. 

The old aphorism runs " See Naples and die." My 
advice is, having gotten to Naples, do not die until you 
see Pompeii; that is, if it be possible to survive a night in 
the city with those pestiferous bedfellows vulgarly known 
as fleas. They drained the venom through my veins, until 
I believed the adage was indeed to be verified. I, however, 
struggled with my adversaries, and when day rescued me 
from their clutches 1 still lived. I was thoroughly resolved 
not to risk another night amongst them before walking the 
city of the dead, and so started on my Pompeian excursion 
at once. 

The entire scene seemed the tableaux of a romance. 
From the initial, where the little dusky Nubian boy, in his 
Eastern garb and polyglot tongue, assisted me into tiie 
carriage with its gayly comparisoned horses and little 
tinkling bells, and clapped his slender Ethiopian hands and 
gabbled his jargon as we dashed off; to the return in the 
golden twilight over the white roads sacred with the foot- 
prints of Sallust and Glaucus, it was as quaint as a picture 
two thousand years old. 

Saturday is market-day here in the land of the gods, as 
it is in adolescent America; and though I was disposed to 
l)elieve that provision for the creature comforts was an un- 
known vulgarity in a section apotheosized by the splendor 
of classical deities, I found the georgical supplies in more 
abundant masses than at home. A caravan of donkej^'-carts 
filled the streets. Poor little beasts, how oppressed they 
looked hauling their heavy loads, or burdened by two great 
pannier-baskets entirely concealing the animal; all I saw 
was a succession of wailing faces, with great nodding ears, 
and spindle legs trotting, trotting, trotting, over the lava 
paths. Two great brass horns project from either side the 
plaintive eyes, from which are suspended on a yoke three 
bells — bells that re-echo each other's melody. Owing to 
tlie salubrity of the Neapolitan climate every variety of 
trade is carried on in the open air. The cobbler and car- 



280 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

penter, linker and tailor, hatter and hosier, work at the 
street corners, their stock spread about them on tlie pave- 
ment; here they sew and saw, sweat and solder, paint and 
polish, and bawl for ceiitisimi when they spy a stranger. 
But these are not the professional mumpers, whose stock 
in trade is in advertising nameless deformities and novel 
maladies, ill-shapen monsters, Calibans, each a Lazarus of 
the lazzaroni. 

The street merchants only try their luck as momentary 
mendicants, but the official beggars are an organized 
national nuisance, the remnants of an ancient system born 
in these districts, when the wealth of centuries was con- 
trolled by such houses as the Medici and Borgia. Though 
banditti are erroneously supposed to be different from the 
old evils, the present eleemosynar}^ classes look like brigands 
— reckless and wicked, daring and repulsive. These beg- 
gars seem to move in battalions, that spring out from the 
walls in certain neighborhoods where they are indigenous, 
and these localities multiply as Pompeii is approached, till 
the numbers increase into a small army. 

All along the route were the macaroni and Italian paste 
manufactories. The unclothed men and boys were at 
work in the dough, while others were spreading the wheaten 
blankets upon the pavement, over racks, and upon roofs to 
dry; dark and dingy establishments, that not even the 
amplitude of flour-dust has power to chasten. Every couple 
of steps were vendors of earthen jugs of the early Roman 
form — large round bodies, long narrow necks, a handle on 
either side. Travellers purchase them to take home as 
relics ; the natives still use them as household utensils. 
The road was dusty as it is ever in the dry season, and the 
inhabitants seemed crumbling into earth. Here paupers 
and princes cluster together. The filthiest people live and 
carry on their trade in the first stories of the palaces, 
while above them and behind them are ineffable extrava- 
gance and beaut}-. The high-road is the empire of the 
unwashed, uncombed, and unkempt classes, a very sink of 
corruption, while through iron-barred courts I caught ex- 
quisite views of the magnificence beyond, Miiere the palace 
lawns slope down to the margin of the blue bay and the 
hoar}^ pallor of the marbles casts the vivid Italian hues of 
nature into a richer color. Here the old apothegm is trans- 
posed, foul without and fair within. 

As we I'ode on, the eternal crater, — cloud by day and 
fire at night, — kept us company. Sometimes we seemed 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 281 

to be scaling his very base, at another he was receding, 
and again he was upright by our side. Great bowlders of 
lava bestrewed the way, and served as supports to the 
wretched shanties; and here they were, just as the molten 
fire rolled down the mountain-side, and accumulated, and 
grew solid, eighteen hundred years ago. What with the 
scorching sun and the pumice-stone powder from the high- 
way, the plants were as arid and white as the wall by 
which they drooped. It was a warm disagreeable ride of 
two and a half hours, with no fresh patches of glowing 
scenery to relieve the squalor of the road ; all was as dole- 
ful and dirty as if Sorrento's orange-groves, Capri's sap- 
phire caves, and Ischia's purple rocky heights were not 
glistening off in the bay like "jewels in the Ethiop's ear." 
Tiie sunshine was there, but there was no green nature to 
temper its rays; it fell fierce and blinding upon all around. 
I was glad when we came to our journey's end, curious as 
all of it was to my stranger gaze. 

The Diomed Inn, a dirty miserable hostehy at the gates of 
Pompeii, is the rest for tourists while waiting for the guide 
of the unearthed city: and here we tarried long before a 
cicerone appeared ; they were either dining or engaged with 
earlier patrons, and while I lingered I noted the incongrui- 
ties of the place. In a back chamber of the shanty immor- 
talized by the title of the opulent Pompeian merchant, was 
a Singer sewing machine, operated by a modern Julia, per- 
haps more beautiful though not so rich nor so petted as 
her centuried-buried progenitor, as her robe was plain and 
at her side a baby pawed. In the atrium a troubadour in 
Spanish costume, thumbing a guitar suspended over his 
shoulder by a crimson riband, begged coin for the music. He 
had a vile look, the olive skin and black beard, and bad 
habits of his class, who would sing or stab as opportunity 
served. The beggars and cripples are annoying ; the min- 
strels dangerous. The house of the wealthy trader was not 
famed for its modern larder, despite the tradition of his 
luxurious feasts in the long ago ; the tastes of this portion 
of the family must have degenerated with their fortunes. 
A good bottle of red wine you are ever certain of in Italy 
— a wine that refreshes and strengthens without intoxica- 
ting ; but I fear as there was no French chef m the house- 
hold economy, the culinary department fell below par. 
Still as I gazed upon the surrounding district from the 
second story of the inn, the vicinage was lovely ; it was a 
study for poet and artist. The luxuriant still-life in sight 

24* 



282 PICTtJRES AND PORTRAITS 

of tlio frowning volcano was almost startling. The varied 
brillianc3^ of tlie vegetation grew to the very crown of tlie 
crnter in the softest and most dazzling garments. It is 
the internal and all-consuming lire in the womb of the 
mother, that gives the hectic flush to the face, and the 
feverish delirium to the blood of her prolific oflTspring. 
And this is the entrance to Euthanasia I This the Stygian 
shore flowering in the lusty beauty of the fabled gods. Ve- 
suvius is death robed in the gaudy raiment of a gala-da}-- ; 
jocund Jove throws his shining mantle o'er the hills above 
the tomb of centuries ! The jaws of death are fringed by 
the lotus flowers; the strains of the chant du sygne are 
smothered by the note of the lark ; the woful death-rattle is 
drowned by the playful dashing of the wanton sea, the last 
gasp is stifled by the trail and tangle of vines, and the hum 
of myriad insect creation ; a bravura of life at the throat of 
the fiery sepulchre. 

Need I mar the harmonious chant of Pliu}^, Bulwer, Du- 
mas, or Nicolini by a discordant repetition ? They have 
bequeathed to the world the religion, the sports, and the 
romance of this early Roman Newport. The}' have added 
an account of the moral diseases, gnawing like canker- 
worms at the heart of society, when poor Pompeii was over- 
taken by the triple storm of fire, ashes, and lava, on that 
daik and dreadful August day of 79 A.D., when wives 
sought husbands, mothers their children, and lovers cried 
aloud in vain for each other, finding peace only in eter- 
nity. I had read the stories of that eventful day, with the 
same wonder and awe as 1 had read of the Creation, the 
Flood, the Crucifixion ; perhaps with some of the vague 
bewilderment with which I read Revelations, and a season- 
ing of the romantic skepticism with which I read the Ara- 
bian Nights^ Robiiison Crui<oe^ or Gulliver^ s Travels. 
There, in the museum, I sought the exhumed proofs of the 
existence that was choked so long ago as scarcely to have 
a lineal connection with our world. I found eight human 
bodies perfectly petrified in their ashen sheaths ; in these I 
read the encouraging lesson that Cicero, Pompey, or Marcus 
Antoninus, Glaucus or Clodius, were not men of greater 
])hysical stature than our present j)oets, statesmen, and ora- 
tors. The skeleton of a dog, a bird, a bone of roast-beef, a 
loaf of bread, a dish of barley, a napkin (the warp still pre- 
served), bronze-lamps, household luxuries, eariings, brace- 
lets, and necklaces, teach us that the work of creation, the 
human appetite, the preparation of food, the habits and 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 283 

craving.s of females for gewgaws, were the same in the 
classic ages as they are to-day. It is a cold, stern fact that 
the life we found in the streets of Naples is very much the 
life that was stilled in the street of Tombs eighteen centu- 
ries ago, where the front and lower story of the palaces 
were let to merchants, while the aedile supped in the atrium 
with his lordly guests, upon lampreys, pistachio, figs, and 
Vesuvio wine. We saw that the baths, the theatre, the 
temple, and the forum were the loadstars of men and 
women then as now. Luxuriously as these Sybarites lived 
in their houses, sparkling with all the glory of fresco, mosaic 
statuary, rich in their retinues of slaves, lulled by the fall 
of fountains, charmed by the beauty of Greek female love- 
liness, still the most opulent homes were comparatively 
small, while vast spaces were devoted to the public build- 
ings, where the populace met to discuss statecraft in the 
forum, social scandal at the baths, to worship the false gods, 
and be duped by the charlatanry of such false priests as 
Arbaces in the temples, and enjoy the bestial sports of the 
amphitheatre. Here the masterpieces of Greek and Roman 
princes of the chisel and the brush were exhibited ; here the 
song of the poet and voice of the declairaer rang through 
column and archway, from foundation to capital ; here the 
patricians felicitated in a transport of oil and aromatic oint- 
ment ; here the contrite matron and maid repaired to solicit 
pardon for the old sin, and sign a contract with her absolver 
for a new one. 

The streets are narrow, the carriage-way scarcely broad 
enough to admit one of our two-wheeled vehicles of to-day, 
sinking more than a foot below the sidewalk, in the centre 
of which are stepping-stones, retaining the print of horses' 
hoofs. The ruts of wheels and the worn and rounded curbs 
are evidences of the superannuation of the city before its 
destruction, or, as I have heard it termed, its preservation. 
Would we have Pompeii in so perfect a state of conserva- 
tion to-day had not the ashes from Vesuvius embalmed it, 
and protected it from the deca}' and corruption of ages? 
The fountain-basins at the street corners are worn into 
hollows by the press of weary human hands upon the brim, 
while the water filled the i)ail, or by lazy indolent hands 
that lolled here while their owners chatted the hours away. 
The stone steps are worn into grooves by the tramp of 
many feet, but the word of welcome, salue^ or cave canem 
(beware of the dog) are still in perfect black and white 
mosaic in the pavements. Shafts are gone, columns broken. 



284 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

and nltfirs defiled, but the colors and forms of the frescoes 
are tnarvellously nnmarred. Walking the streets we ex- 
claimed at the limited dimensions of the town: How much 
sleeps still under yonder hills of pumice-stone? 

Come with me to the house of Diomed. Every one goes 
to the house of Diomed! Of course, is that a just reason 
I should neglect it? It is slightly out of town and elevated 
from the road. A flight of steps lead to the peristyle, from 
whifh we entered the baths, the atrium, the eating rooms, 
the gardens, the library; anotiier flight of steps descend to 
the cellar, to the scullery offices of the house, and where 
the aniphorse of wine were kept; the vault that gave forth 
the dead that sought shelter in it with their stores of oil 
and food; the subterranean retreat to which the vain Julia 
came with her jewels and frail life, eighteen hundred years 
ago, hoping to foil the insatiate avenger. Here are the 
chambers where Julia writhed in an ^gony of envy when 
she heard the fair lone had won the heart of Glaucus ; 
here the halls where vulgar wealth entertained and flattered 
genius; here the libraries of charred and blackened papyri 
scrolls, from which the master assumed to cultivate a love 
of Greek literature ; here the cabinels of gems, intaglio and 
cameo, that formed the pride of the rich man's ambition; 
here the spot where the skeleton arm was found bearing 
still upon the whited bone the golden circlet with the 
name "Julia," a false charm that endured how many hun- 
dred years after the decay of nature's; here the doorposts 
at which Diomed was transfixed in a preserve of ashes and 
steam as a sample and a text to posterity. 

Come then to the house of the tragic poet, sanctified by 
the pure adoration of the Thessalian slave-girl, who loved 
her master for the charms her sightless eyes could not 
behold; ah! I can see her now, sitting in the shadow of 
broken columns, weaving a garland to crown her god, and 
singing away his hours of ennui and her own heart; I 
fanc3^ I hear the echo of their mutual prayer to their pagan 
deities for one gleam of light to break through the closed 
windows of her soul, — her prayer that she might gaze upon 
the radiance of her king; his, that she might see the beauty 
of his lone. Oh! what a satirist is Love! 

Come to the wine shops, where the counters are groined 
and dented by the arms of loungers, where the great casks 
still stand as if the proprietor had just stepped out to dis- 
cuss the new pi'jetorship with a neighbor-politician. Come 
to the shrine of the Cyprian goddess, where you find curious 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 285 

inscriptions on the walls which I could not read, and pecu- 
liar emblems or beacons of trade that I could decipher. If 
these people were lewd and their art wanton, remember 
they were only in the embryo of civilization. 

I am not here to preach a sermon upon their lives nor to 
moralize upon their vices, only to record what I saw, yet 
objects- that are pointed out as those of chiefest interest I 
dare not expound. Who has not listened to a moral 
harangue upon this text, the point of which was the cor- 
ruption of the populace, and that God in his wrath had 
swept off this community not an hour too soon, as their 
crimes exceeded those of Sodom and Gomorrah? Is this 
doctrine a true one? Have we reformed? I fear not; go 
into any of the great capitals of Europe or America to-day, 
and 3'ou will find vice existing in as many forms and colors 
and of course more frequent in proportion to the population, 
as at the annihilation of Pompeii. If these gross iniquities 
do not stare us into horror and shame, it is because of the 
prescribed orbit in which we revolve, or because the record 
of our time has not been written, and not because the base 
infection is not raging and inoculating in our homes and 
highways, like a subtle poison or the fierce fire of petro- 
leum. 

After visiting the town theatre, a neat, moderate-sized 
playhouse, where the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, 
and ^schylus won the applause of listening crowds, we 
trudged over the dusty country paths, out to the amphi- 
theatre where the gladiatorial sports were enacted, an 
edifice not only for the accommodation of the Pompeian 
commonwealth, but for such voluptuaries as should come 
from Naples and the neighboring towns at the time of the 
grand pageants. The noble patrons drove into the theatre 
in their chariots, and entered their boxes by a concealed 
passage extending around the arena in an irregular circle. 
The interior arrangement is much like the Coliseum at 
Rome, and not unlike the theatres of our day, tiers of 
stalls and galleries being the chief features. Here, perched 
upon some cruel emperor's box, with the memories of wild 
beasts tearing, limb from limb, early Christians, and lap- 
])ing the human blood from off their nether jaw, while the 
audiences turned their thumbs for death, with Castellamare 
across the bay burning me to blindness with the sparkle of 
its silver and jewelled heights, I drank the fiery blood of 
Yesuvius, — a franc and a half a bottle, from an adjacent 
vineyard, — dra^k to the pagan deities, that have left us 



286 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

such a sweet legacy of hallowing sublimities and beguiling 
romances; to the Greek dramatists and sculptors for the 
benefaction of their literature and art, and to the flaming 
scourge waving his graceful plume over the complete demo- 
lition of the city of sin and debauchery. 

The guide was one of those incorruptible officials who 
cannot be feed with two francs, but who does conduct you 
to a photograph shed, where you are requested to buy 
an album for eight, ten, or twenty francs, which he divides 
with the proprietor of the atelier. 

Back to Naples through the valley sacred with the thun- 
dering eloquence of Cicero, or the song of Yirgil, and the 
praise of Tacitus, or the kisses of Johannas Secundas, and 
the panegyrics of Sallust, where the little asses were return- 
ing from the busy city rid of their burden of provisions, 
but carrj'ing their dream}'' masters to their suburban homes, 
where the most grotesque forms were beaten with black 
pebbles into white walls, and lamps were lighted to honor 
curious dwarfed Yirgins, that resembled jointing-dolls of 
the last century. 

In the Museum Borbonico a perfect feast of inscriptions, 
whole quarters of walls, with the frescoes preserved, taken 
from the exhumed city, and mosaics, statuary, paintings, 
gems, antiquities, and papyri is spread for the antiquarians. 
Of the Pompeian frescoes we note strong colors, fine lines, 
and considerable grace of treatment. 

The one valuable text of this wonderful sermon of 
Pompeii is that infidels who doubt the wonders and the 
miracles of the Scriptures, and others who laugh at Robin- 
son Crusoe and Pilgrini's Progress^ and Arabian Nights^ 
will find the romance of reality and the fiction of fact in 
this unearthed <j'\iy. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 28t 



LETTER LYIII. 

"We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
Reels with its fulness ; there— for ever there- — 

Chain 'd to the chariot of triumphale Art, 
We stand as captives, and would not depart." 

Byron. 

Florence, June, 1878. 

At Rome I remained overnight en route to this lovel}'' 
city where I am now writing. " The papal capital is in tor- 
por and its hotels are dismantled, but it is ever fascinating 
to me. I believe tlie Costanzi was the only startling ex- 
perience of that night in Rome, and the staggering blow 
was its hotel bill. Envious friends may say it was a just 
retribution for my choice of such ostentatious lodgings. 
It was not pretension that prompted me to the costly 
albergo where American sovereigns dine foreign princes, 
but the rational motive of a modest traveller, who found 
the Costanzi near the depot. Possessing a keen appreci- 
ation of the luxuries of life, I revelled, of course, in the 
palatial a}»artments assigned me, dined in the royal base- 
ment dining-hall, amongst Pompeian and Egyj^tian frescoes, 
and congratulated myself on all the landlord's excess of 
courtesy. Alas! when the account came to be settled the 
sweet delusion vanished; every blue sphinx and crimson 
dragon on the wall, every block of marble in the floor, and 
every antique brazier or lamp that had so deligiited me the 
previous cA^ening, had to be bravely paid for. There is no 
pleasure equal to that of the travel-stained tourist as lie 
recruits his strength in a regal hall hung with costly 
tapestries and laces, but 3'ou who have had to square such 
debts in gold painfully realize how rapidly the sheen of the 
satin and the fleeciness of lace fade under these circum- 
stances, and how soon remorse comes to enforce a stern 
economy. But there is some compensation for one such 
thoughtless extravagance. It was a iiealthy reaction, and 
as I reflected upon the Roman epicure Apicius, who lived 
in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, and spent one hun- 
dred millions of sesterces (about $3,600,000) on his kitchen 
alone, and poisoned himself because he had only $360,000 
left, 1 felt that I might be pardoned this folly of a night at 
the Costanzi. 



288 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Tlie entrance to Florence is a continuous flovver-gnrrlen 
of quite twenty miles. The more extended my travel in 
Italy the more marvellous become the variety and wealth 
of vegetation. The spontaneity of still nature is the un- 
interrupted deliglit of the vo^^ager. The Tuscans worship 
the emblem of life as the protector of their crops as de- 
voutly as the Calabrians, and very curious are the huge 
personations appearing in the fields and at the roadsides 
of their tutelary god. The blue heavens, the golden grain 
waving under the shadow of the gray mountains, the white 
roads, the emerald turf, and the olive-bronze foliage of the 
trees, make up the colors of the picture in ihe exquisite 
suburbs of the sweet city of art. The colors were rendered 
more living by the vision of two mules carrying their bur- 
dens up the steep mountain-path that winds in snakelike 
coils to the summit, which is crowned by a monastery. 

Florence is perhaps the most aristocratic cit3^ in Italy, 
considered in relation to its ancient families and art, its 
recent improvements, and the influence of the English con- 
centrated here, though at present it is under the ban of 
national poverty, and feels the exigencies of the times no 
less than America. Its garniture is, however, much more 
threadbare than the young republic's, but this is more at- 
tributable to age than present indigence. Here history and 
romance have combined, here the past and the present have 
been newly married, and if we have no flaming Vesuvius, 
nor Castello de I'Ovo frowning grimly from the bay, no 
cracking of whips, and shouts of hawkers, no smell of fish, 
nor traffic of a seaport, as at Naples, we are more than 
compensated by the half-vague, religious, studious hush of 
the art emporium, the noble palaces, and the gentle Arno 
bathed in tlie silver beams of the lovely moonlight ; its flow 
is so calm and its murmur so melodious that it seems some 
animated phantom beneath my window. 

I first saw Florence by moonlight, or by moonlight and 
gaslight, as the gas lighted up the piazza of the Cathedral 
and the adjacent streets; where street merchants were hold- 
ing little fairs, their tawdry stock glorified b}'^ glaring pitch 
torches, while the moonlight chastened the statues upon 
the Ponte Trinita and in the open squares, and I think that 
memory will linger longer than any other. Where can one 
turn here without encountering a fresh revelation ? and 
each new one seems to elbow the preceding from its pedes- 
tal. It is qui^te impossible to forget the sanctifying genii 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 289 

of Florence, as they speak to you from every corner, square, 
portico, and church. 

Dante in the piazza Santa Croce recalls the " Inferno," 
the "Vita Nuovo," and his idealic love of the youthful Bea- 
trice; and how many ghosts of former glory rise before us 
in the Church of Santa Croce ? It seems to be the treasure- 
house of immortal memories: tombs and mausolea that are 
consecrated by the bones they cover, marbles that tell long 
life-stories of toil jmd triumph, monuments that speak of 
love's suffering and devotion, dust that mingles in death as 
the spirits blended in life; yet here the scathing tongue of 
calumny has lost its fatal sting. Go look upon the prince 
of artists' sanctuary guarded by the sister arts, Painting, 
Sculpture, and Architecture. Go to the tomb of him wlio 
hails you in the piazza. Go to the catafalque of the crafty 
"Florentine secretary," and ponder the life of the subtle 
statesman and student, yet public benefactor. Go to the 
resting-places of the mad but sincere lovers, Alfieri and the 
Countess of Albany, and tell me if there is not a holy at- 
mosphere about their ashes despite their irreverent passion ? 

Come, then, to the S.Lorenzo; you will not tarry in the old 
sacristy amongst the rattling bones of the sons of Cosmo 
de' Medici, but wend your way to the Medician Chapel, 
where evidences of the family wealth and piety are por- 
trayed in precious marbles, paintings, statuary, and golden - 
bronze effigies of the former monarchs of this house. The 
fac similes of Julian and Lawrence de' Medici upon their 
sarcophagi are the cynosures of the sacristy, not so much 
by the immaculate drawing of the representative figures as 
by the hovering sovereignty of the personifications of Day 
and Night, Twilight and Dawn. The supernatural signifi- 
cance yet vital lineaments of these emblematic figures is 
something so inimitable, and the end so devoutly to be 
attained, that I was almost about to advise the young 
aspirant to study every curve and expression of these alle- 
gorical mentors for three years, as the immortal Malibran 
acquired the elements of music from a card, and then apply 
the combinations to whatever subject they may treat. 

Yet there were no cop3'ists here, while the Pitti and 
XJffizi galleries were swai'ming with young ambitious devo- 
tees. Long I watched these students, and often preferred 
the new and obscure duplicate to the honored original. 

The Pitti and XJffizi Palace galleries are connected by a 
corridor-bridge across the Arno, and very peculiar the sen- 
sation to be suddenly aware of your novel situation, with 
25 



200 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

only the deeply flowing waters beneath, while pictures 
and tapestries are on all sides. I should say the distin- 
guishing features of this thesaurus of art are the furlongs 
of tapestry that embellish the walls of the passage girding 
the galleries on either shore of the classic stream. They 
are the manufactures of the establishment inaugurated by 
Cosmo de' Medici over three centuries ago and wliile the 
cabinets of gems, woodcuts, and national schools of art 
are here in magnificent profusion, it is a dose oft repeated, 
while the woven representations of eminent masters shine 
forth in salient splendor. There is a marked contrast be- 
tween these museums of Florence and the Borbonico at 
Kaples. Pitti is opulent in the number and schools of 
j)ainting; Borbonico in its gems, antique marbles, and 
Pompeian preserves. Not having enjoyed the archaic in- 
taglios and their cameo obverse, — ^jewels from the collec- 
tions of Sallust and Pansa, — those in the Uflizi would 
have been a gratifying treat; but the graceful grouping, 
allegorical and mj^thological combinations, and minutice of 
execution shadow the rivalling collection into comparative 
obscurity. 

Then the marbles I Does the Florentine quarry con- 
tnin nny thing as startling in their style of manipulation as 
the P'arnese Bull and the Diana of Ephesus, or that insin- 
uating little Bacchus, — whose I cannot say, but he cannot 
be mistaken, though standing amongst a legion of brother 
gods ? And where does there exist another so bizarre a 
treasur}' as contained in the barred rooms of the Neapolitan 
Museum. I allude to the apartments from which the visitor 
is warned by a flaming Italian inscription, which may be 
read by one of almost any nationality ; where the exhumed 
illustrations of pagan vitiation are spread in unblushing 
eftVontery; designs that proclaim each step of moral phi- 
losophj^ through the era of idolatry. Yet only the favored 
lew, the archffilogical students, are permitted access to this 
depositor}^, and if a priestess of the sanctum of Clio enter 
w ith all the aplomb of one of the elect she is hurled out as 
a firebrand from a powder magazine. The awful and sad 
lesson tauglit by these remains I must dwell upon just for 
a moment. Never do I refer to the destroyed city, but 
some new and terrible evidence of God's implacable ven- 
geance suggests itself to my mind. Not content to pour 
down the liquid fiie of His wrath upon these malefactors 
wliile i)hinged in the very summer of their sin, He pre- 
served every symbol and epigraph of their iniquity as a 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 291 

declaration of their shame to all succeeding ages, while 
there remains hardly a trace of whatever virtuous or chival- 
ric tendencies may have graced them. In the Pitti all that 
is great in government, ennobling in art, pure in religion, 
and sweet in domesticity is presented. In each salon the 
deification — either pagan or Christian — of one of the early 
patrons of the gallery is portrayed in fresco; it may be 
termed by the Stoic a romantic conception, but does it not 
inspire a spirit of public benefaction ? Then, in the hall 
of portraits of painters — is it not an incentive to young 
ambition that he may in tiie future fill a place in one of 
these panels ? 

In Florence one need not go to public hall or private 
palace to enjoy tlie fairest flowers of art that ever bloomed 
upon the plant of human genius, nor the rarest jewels 
coined in the crucible of the human mind. Every piazza 
is crowned by its shining coronal of mirble gems; everj'- 
street is bordered by a zone of beautiful conceits and pre- 
cious devices. Art is as plenty as chestnut cakes at the 
corners; Yenus, Cupid, Mars, Juno, or Adonis, sparkling 
in all the symmetry of inspiration, fresh from hands that 
toiled in unison to the purest promptings of the soul, are 
sold in sliops, which are as frequent as drygoods stores on 
Ciiestnut Street. 

On the Ponte Yecchio is a marvellous street of jewelry 
shops. How long have they stood ? Ah! since tlie days 
Fra Angelico prayed and painted at Fiesole, or Savona- 
rola's voice thundered through the streets in zealous and 
crude eloquence against the corruption of the de Medicis. 
Perhaps tlie Florentine demimonde decked themselves in 
turquoise and pearls from these dark, low-roofed stores 
upon the bridge. Pearls befitting the purity of Desde- 
mona ; pearls hanging in great hanks in the windows, in 
such amplitudes as we display wax beads at home; pearls 
for which my woman's heart yearned, yet from which I 
was obliged to turn, without even venturing to price. 

All these Italian towns, certainly since the accession of 
Victor Emanuel and the dazzling triumphs of Garibaldi, 
have added to their old art treasures in the public and 
private palaces, beautiful galleries, or, as they call them, 
piazzas, as also fine parks, and walks, and drives; and the 
genius of United Italy is seen everywhere in abundant 
statuary to Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and the later 
leaders of thought and action. You mark the healtiiy 
difference between ancient kings and favorites and the 



292 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

recent republican innovators, by the money spent upon 
these latter, and although many of the worshippers of the 
past will tearfully tell you of the great loss sustained by 
the dismantling of the palaces heretofore belonging to the 
crown, and to the discrowned dukes and nobility of such 
falsely-called republics as Genoa, Venice, Florence, Milan, 
and Naples, I hail the better time when the money of the 
state is rather given to the state for popular education, 
than lavished upon the luxuries of princes. Among these 
beautiful, popular places let me rank the Cascine or park 
of Florence, called, from a farm to which it once belonged, 
casino or dairy. Bounded by the rivers Arno and Mugnone, 
the road rises to a striking "open" about tw^o miles in 
length, approached by broad highways, leading to a large 
circle, where the military band plays several times a week. 
As we stood listening to the music, carriages, filled with 
the nobility, drawn by spirited horses, came up, the occu- 
pants pausing also to hear, and to see the soldiers flirting 
with the girls in the shade; we next started off through 
the unique avenues radiating to the monument of the Rajah 
of Hoiapore, a young Indian prince who died at Florence 
in 1870 on his way home from England, and whose body 
was cremated on the spot, his attendants making the whole 
neighborhood resound with their strange and melancholy 
worship. These avenues were singularly wild and pictur- 
esque, the tall and venerable trees by which the}" were 
lined recalling some of the natural arcades in our Fair- 
mount Park. 

But older and more interesting than this fashionable re- 
treat are the Boboli Gardens, which are approached through 
the Pitti Palace, and whose history takes you back to its 
origin 350 years ago. From its height there is a charming 
view of Florence, with its palaces and churches, and as I 
stand and gaze upon the ample landscape below, and en- 
joy the mass of shrubbery, and statuary, and fountains, 
with their swans and other water fowl immediately around 
me, I think m}'^ gaze never drank in a more enrapturing 
siglit. The evening was so mild, the air so balmy and so 
heavy with the incense of the spic}'' odors of cedar and of 
palm, that I did not wonder at the pride of the Florentines 
in this exquisite and elaborate conservatory. 

Florence lay drowsing sweetly in the valley of the Arno, 
with the golden mists of heaven falling between the rigid 
palace walls and in the narrow streets where chilling damps 
strike to the soul, while the piazza beyond is in one blaze 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 293 

of wliite fii'c. Such lieat that even the wretched beasts in 
the hacks droop until they fall dead in their harness; the 
stranger hurries into the raw shuddering by-streets, and 
the natives loll along unconscious of the caloric. The 
brothers of the Misericordia are in the streets and upon 
the bridges in their long black gowns and hoods and black 
masks, some bearing a bier upon their shoulders, others 
returning from their visits to the sick. The calm silver 
waters flow gently in their course, and to my right and to 
my left and beyond are the villas of illustrious American 
sculptors, English painters, and wealthy authoresses, near 
the roads glorified by the names of Michael Angelo, Gali- 
leo, Machiavelli, and Dante. 

Fair Fh)rence indeed ! fitting home of the great masters, 
seat of art, science, and bravery, favorite of Angelo and 
Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and their scholars and con- 
temporaries, and at a later date the capital of the king- 
dom; it seemed a thousand pities that the urgency of the 
government and the historic logic of Italian unity de- 
manded the removal of central authority to the great capi- 
tal founded by the Caesars, consecrated by the sublime 
sacrifice of Rienzi, and the later statemanship of Cavour 
and his illustrious red-shirted co-worker, the hero of 
Caprera. 



LETTER LIX. 

" You may remember, scarce five years are past, 
Since in your brigantine you sailed to see 
The Adriatic wedded by our duke." 

Otwat's Venice Phesetived. 

Venice, June, 1878. 

Between Naples and Florence there are pronounced 
points of contrast and comparison. Venice has no parallel 
nor approximate. If it were an animal I might call it mon- 
grel : a plant, heterogenous ; a fish amphibious; a language, 
hybrid ; a human being, hermaphrodite. Be there a word 
in the queen's English, in the whole categorj^ of tongues 
upon which to couch it? Sui generis is too weak; outre 
too vague a term. Anomalous would suit the rhetorician, 

25* 



294 riCTL'RES AND PORTRAITS 

while nonpareil would.be the chosen phrase of the printer. 
I niiglil call it an eccentricity of nature, an aberration of 
earth, a prodigy of the cosmical sphere, an incongruity of 
the universe; and so richly clothed in parlance, yet no pic 
ture of this fair Aphrodite would be presented, rocked in 
her briny cradle, whose hues have as many changes as the 
chameleon — now azure, then emerald, and again a pale 
opaline rose. 

It was eight in the evening when I left Florence, and as 
arid and breathless a night as one might expect in the tor- 
rid zone. Emanuletta, the celebrated flower-girl of Ital}', 
• — who has, alas! long since shed her youtliful and brilliant 
plumage, — was at the station, tossing her nosegays into 
the ladies' laps, and presenting them to the gentlemen with 
all the beguiling coquetry of eighteen. I had heard much 
of this girl, who had reigned queen of her clan for decades, 
sometimes appearing in one Italian capital, then in another, 
floating and clipping into all the saturnalias these southern 
cities afford, now the pet of a duke, then the protege of a 
countess, always the favorite of the community. She is 
now a woman of quite sixty, but her natural graces and arti- 
ficial personal perquisites make her look at least twenty 
years younger. Her full figure and fantastic costume are 
her characteristic advantages. With her, life has been one 
uninterrupted drama from the cradle; all the natural inci- 
dents and tastes of the several epochs of a woman's exist- 
ence have been given to the winds, and the play has gone 
on day after day in a succession of tableaux. To-day she 
wears the same crimson petticoat, the same velvet bodice, 
the same lace kerchief, ne?it\y folded over her bosom, that 
she did forty-three years ago ; even the same smile curves her 
lips, the same ndice sparkle brightens her eyes, the same bon- 
mots dro}) from her tongue, and the same quick repartee. 
Her life-chain of adventure has not dulled with time, but 
rather brightened with its attritions. As she has lived so 
will she live on to the end. The deep night rapidly grow- 
ing through the twilight has not deadened any of her gay 
dress nor effervescing spirits, and when life has been eclipsed 
by death she will be remembered as Emanuletta the flower- 
girl. 

As we left the gentle valley of the Arno far behind, the 
clouds burst into a flood of water, and the atmosphere be- 
came more endurable; but as tunnels were frequent, and my 
fellow-travellers in the carriage, one a British daughter of 
nobility, — the Lady Louisa and her companion, — were ex- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 295 

ccssively fidgety regarding tlie adjustment of the windows, 
the blessed oblivion of sleep was not the portion of any 
of the occupants until our titled Englisher changed cars 
for the Tyrol ; then we poor republican mortals resigned 
ourselves to the seductions of the sweet soother, and 
dreamed the hours away until morning. 

The approach to Yenice is marked by the swamps that 
dot the landscape, where vegetation is prolific and thrusts 
its glowing life through the brackish estuaries, and an 
infinity of vegetable color glows in the shallow water 
of the blue lagoons. These marshes increase and extend 
until the great bridge is crossed that carries travellers di- 
rectly into the station on one of the large islands washed 
by the Grand Canal. As I stood in the dawn looking out 
upon the city of the sea from the depot quay the dank at- 
mosphere enveloped land and water in a misty cloak, the 
weeds clung to the door-posts and foundation stones, and a 
saline odor and taste filled the air. The lines of Rogers 
came to me then, and not those of Byron, which is the 
acknowledgment of an undisciplined mind ; surely the 
" Childe" should take precedence, and yet there is a theory 
afloat attaching school-girl romance to these poems, and if 
we would be considered past our tyronism we must keep 
our mental cells well swept of these vagrant verses. But 
who, with the sentiment of a mud-turtle, could cross the 
Bridge of Sighs, pass the palace of the Foscari, ascend the 
Giant's Stairway, or linger in the piazza of San Marco with- 
out recalling the lordly English bard ? Who drift under 
the Rialto without recollecting Shakespeare? Or who gaze 
upon the widowed Adriatic and forget Otway ? Some say 
these are the influences of the past, but they are the powers 
which will endure, and be they hackneyed or having the 
odor of a young lady's manual, they are popular because 
they are permanent. 

There is a decided flavor of the Orient about Yenice. It 
may lie chiefly in historical associations, and certainly the 
traders from the Levant, the decaying glor}"^, and prevailing 
moresque style of architecture, revive the legends of the 
Turkish wars centuries ago. 

Riding to the hotel in a gondola, through a street of 
water, and driven by two sailor-boys in white shirts and 
blue ribbons, was a peculiar experience, and not a pleasant 
one to me. I had contemplated a delirium of ecstasy float- 
ino: through the canals where Desdemona had drifted, and 
swimniino- in the boats that had carried Belvidcra and 



296 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Porlia. Tlie old halo vanished in the depression of the 
present. The decaying magnificence of otlier centuries is 
the grim-visaged phantom that stares one into revery; from 
the crumbling art the mind reverts to the degenerate popu- 
lace, the waning commerce, the buried doges; then the in- 
tense silence of the streets, where no sound of horse's hoof 
nor rumble of wheel is heard, nought save the solitary dip 
of the gondolier's oar, and his weird salute to his fellow- 
oarsman as he whirls his black barge around the acute cor- 
ners of the watery pathways. It was all very oppressing 
to me; indeed, 1 felt more as if I were exi)l()ring a city of 
the dead than 1 did at Pompeii. The entombed glory of 
ages seemed to underlie the waters, and the sombre boats 
— which are entirely black b}^ order of law — appeared tiie 
sailing hearses of expired majesty. 

The hotels as a rule are not any more fascinating at the 
entrance than the sea, from which they seem to rise. The 
atrium, as the Roman would say, is damp, dark, and pre- 
sents very much the appearance of a boathouse, or ship- 
chandler}'. Ascending a spacious stairway there are second, 
third, fourth, and fifth floors, abounding in all the charming 
equipments of a Parisian house; the chambers luxurious, 
the floors mosaic, and the inevitable porcelain stove, the 
conspicuous feature that baffled my imagination long before 
1 discovered its use. In every hall and chamber I saw a 
great, white, fluted, cylindrical apparatus, and I walked 
round and round them, turning every screw and crank, and 
at length divined their purpose, and although it is June 
their warmth is not unwelcome in the salt climate and 
the chilling rain. 

The formation of this strange product of the pirates of 
2000 years ago puzzled and interested me. How came it 
iiere? was my continual mental interrogation. It is indeed 
mountain debris and drifting alpine currents that fashioned 
this floating city ? While it is declining in power it is grow- 
ing in latitude. Every year earth is added to the sand 
islands covered by the lagoons, and some day these foetus 
worlds will have completed their gestation and spring into 
existence, glorious and beautiful spheres. Children of the 
sea, may I call them ? and Venice the regent, though hoary 
and superannuated, is augmenting her })rogeny each year, 
^nd a healthy oflTspring it is; rich in its capabilities, afflu- 
ent in its growth of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and animal 
life. 

These lagoons, so lusty with life, would be sinks of infec- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 297 

tion were it not for the cliastening saline ingi'edients; and 
where all glows with vitalit}' death would exhale its venom- 
ous breath. The ragged weeds coursing in the stream and 
the green scum that marks the flow and ebb of the tide upon 
the marble foundations, are its true conservators of life, 
and teach us God's ubiquitous providence. 

"Hast ever swum in a gondola at Venice ?" Ah, yes! 
and a very emotional swim it was. The magnificence of 
the grand canal coiling far beyond like a great S of sapphire 
crystal losing itself in the curve, spanned by its bridges 
and bordered by its palaces, is the first impression ; tlien 
as the barge moves onward with measured sweep, the cus- 
tom-house, a long narrow edifice at the entrance of tlie canal 
upon the left shore, recalls the extended traffic of the past ; 
the churches, with their variety of schools and eras of art; 
the palaces, with their storied recollections of dukes and 
demigods, of pampered favorites and oppressed genius, and 
after all the abode of poets; piles that still echo the names 
of Othello and Shylock, Antonio, Pierre, and Jaffier; stones 
that suggest the base of tragedies, and fa§ades that portray 
the art of the Saracens, the austerity of the Decadence, and 
the resplendence of the Renaissance. Here a regal home, 
grim in the rigid splendor of mediaeval days ; there an illumi- 
nated front, glowing in its gold and frescoes, awnings, and 
jutting balconies; farther on an exterior of white, elaborated 
in black marble; and again the most brilliant pictures in 
mosaic, vaguely hidden by canopies, arches, and columned 
porticos. 

The Rialto, where the Christians were wont to rate the 
Jews about their moneys and spit upon them ; where the 
traders sell their gay beads from their stalls upon the 
bridge, and the venders of hot boiled potatoes supply their 
customers with the Irish vegetable in their bursting jackets, 
while the varied populace drift under the dark arches be- 
neath, was one of my chosen rendezvous. Farther on, the 
Grand Canal curves the delta of the Camps di Marte, — ^a 
large grassy island, a sort of suburban retreat of the ultra- 
marine city, — and loses itself in the Guidecca, that sepa- 
rates the city proper from the island where the laborers 
and factory employes have their homes; the district of 
Guidecca is to Venice what Manayunk is to Philadelphia. 
Its channel is broad and deep enough to pass large craft, 
and is the thoroughfare of traffic for the manufactories and 
exi)orting houses. Here the romantic delight of the Grand 
Canal faded into an emotion akin to fear as the clouds 



298 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

lowered, the riotous winds came sweei)ing over the hroad 
bosom of the ocean, creeping amongst tlie sand reefs, 
swelling the waves into foam-crested billows, that broke 
into tempestuous eddies, and rocked the frail skiff fore and 
aft with the growing storm. The gondolier's sharp cries 
grew louder, and as I rode around this wilderness of water 
I thought if I were careened in the brine it would be an easy 
and soon forgotten sleep. 

The city may be traversed through the contracted alley- 
ways, and by the bridges that serve as stepping-stones over 
the mammoth gutters of sea-water. This is a tedious mode 
of transit, but the only method by which to get an idea 
of the construction of Venice. A ride in a gondola to the 
piazza of St. Mark condenses all the beauty and romance of 
the situation; but to thread the labyrinthine sinuosities of 
the footpath a picture of lowly Venetian life is best obtained. 
Narrow avenues, that seem only arcades, flanked b}^ prosper- 
ous shops, whose doorsteps almost touch in the centre of tlie 
passage. Wandering through these curtailed inflexions of 
the town, I found myself in the noble square of San Marco. 
I cannot relate by wiiat route I came, suffice it, I got there; 
my saunterings brought me face to face with tlie temple of 
the tutelary saint guarded by the winged lions of the 
Apocalypse. Indeed, where may the eyes turn in Venice 
and not rest upon these prophetic monsters? They are in 
the immediate piazza of the tabernacle in a countless va- 
liety and multitude. They are gaudy in fresco, rude in 
mosaic, glowering in bronze, mounted upon columns at a 
dizzy altitude; they hover in tiie court of the doges, they 
crouch at the tomb of Canova, and crown the cenotaph of 
Tilian; they hail you from common and court, ornament 
portal and pediment, symbolize saint and sinner, the crest 
of prince and pauper, and are the genii of the Queen of the 
Adriatic. 

The piazza of St. Mark is the focus of municipal power. 
It has an opening quay toward the sea on the west, and a 
fencing of palace, shop, and church, upon the three other 
cheeks. The devotees come to their matins and vespers, 
tlie fashions come to enjoy the gayety and sorbetta^ the 
traveller to see, the ladies to be seen, the trader to fulfll 
his mission, tlie Jew to barter, the seamen to sport, and 
the flovver-girl to sell her bouquets and receive the glances 
of admiration from the throng. Trul}', a scene of fair 
witchery when tlie glowing lamps throw their mellow, 
golden light over the square and its gossiping occupants, 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 299 

and find a triple reflection in the blue waves, which are 
lighted into a phosphorescence by the moon, and the sweet 
strains of the dulcet Italian band float over all a surge of 
melody. 

The Venetian flower-girl is the most conspicuous object 
of the picture; she circulates between the cafes and the 
little tables under the arches. They are most decidedly 
the 3'oungest, best-dressed, and best-looking women of this 
school I have seen, and are also the most importunate 
canvassers for personal favor. I watched the subtlety 
and cajolery of one of these fair ones as she endeavored to 
decoy the male fish into the net she wove- — the woof of 
smiles and blushes; she courtsied, winked, blinked, smiled 
archly, wafted kisses from her aromatic finger-tips, and, as 
a binding favor, fastened the flowers upon the cavaliers' 
coats. 

The Cathedral is a flashingly ornate structure, with low 
mosque or minaret domes. Blackened by time, it stands a 
majestic relic of the past. The coarse, garish mosaics in 
the fa§ade that overarch the doors are rendered more 
flaunting by contrast with the sombre pile and its poor 
surroundings. Inside there is none of the characteristic 
cleanliness of the basilicas in Rome and Florence. The 
mosaic blocks of the pavement are lacerated and dislocated 
by the scythe of Time, grimed by the dust he carries with 
him, and unwashed by friendly hands. The jewels and 
precious marbles of the altar have alone defied the almighty 
despoiler, standing forth the stars of the withering sanc- 
tuary. 

The Palace of the Doges is a dream of wonder to the 
stranger. Its great rows of cloisters or columned galleries 
are of architecture so graceful as to appear the poetry and 
music of masonry, and yet so enduring as to last through 
the eternity. Such elaboration of base and capital I had 
yet not beheld ; curves, loopholes, and entablatures that 
seemed the inspiration of the troubadour. A great stair- 
way — the Giant's Staircase — down which Marino Faliero's 
head is said to have rolled at his execution, though it was 
not erected until after he was guillotined, leads from the 
court to the colonnades above. A gaping wound in the' 
wall marks the spot where conspirators dropped the pois- 
onous billets against their enemies into the lion's moutli, 
in the dead watches of the night. Next day the unsus- 
])ecting, pitiable wretches were tried by the Council of 
Ten or the Council of Three, and condemned to death or 



300 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

a dungeon — guilty ever, as the tribunal chose to find them. 
Here are the chambers where the inquisitors judged the 
innocent, lined by a wealth of cunning marbles — beauty 
tiiat enraptures the soul of the gazer by its sublimit}?^ one 
moment, only to make the despair still more dark into 
which it is plunged the next, by the frowning Bridge of 
Sighs, that spans tlie narrow canal and connects palace 
and })rison, and the tenebrious cells for the convicted, 
where no ray of hope or sunlight entered; a rough-hewn 
hole in the upper portion of the cell-wall served as an 
aperture through which food was handed to the prisoner. 
There was a mysterious glamour and an awful silence about 
these subterranean dens that carried me back to the days 
of shadowy confessors, secret doors, and sliding panels ; 
I expected to see the four walls contract and crush me, or 
a threatening firebrand appear in the darkness and vibrate 
over my unoffending head, or seas of molten fire to flood 
the cave and swallow me in their lurid depths, or the 
ground upon which I stood to yawn and reveal hungry 
beasts ready to devour me. It was not until I had shaken 
off the damp and must in the outer air of heaven that I 
felt fairly rid of the ghastly phantom. 

The illustrious paintings of the palace relate the great 
story of the ancient Yenetian Republic. Recollections of 
big ships and glorious victories are all about us. On wall 
and ceiling are the noble achievements of Tintoretto and 
Paul Veronese, works that proclaim the dignity of the 
doges as well as the immortality of the artists. The pal- 
ace was a pronounced contrast to the prison, but even here 
there was an aroma of arbitrary grandeur or autocratic 
lustre that did not please my republican tastes, and cast a 
sad reflection through the vivid pigments of fresco. The 
poverty and thraldom of the masses were deplorably ap- 
parent in contrast with lavish wealth and obtrusive pomp. 

I had often read and listened to the anecdote of tlie 
'* Pigeons of St. Mark." I will not say I disbelieved its 
authenticity, but I thought there was some insidious hum- 
bug or suggestio falsi^ so to speak, about the stor}^; and I 
determined to convince mj^self of its truth, like Thomas, 
by seeing with my own eyes and demonstrating with my 
own hands. I was in one of the legion of photograph shops 
of the piazza, overhauling the Italian Hebrew's stock of 
blue pictures — three tones bluer than I ever saw the main 
and sky. In the pictures everything is of the same tint, 
cathedral, palace, custom-house, men, water, and boats; in 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 301 

nature each object has a distinct color of its own, and the 
representations that draw nearest to fact are those floatin^^ 
in a pale, rosy haze or incense. However, to revert to our 
Tiioutons ; as I was in the shop I noticed a vast number of 
these birds flitting about the square and on the porches, 
but then, said I, the communit3^ are feeding them, and it is 
only natural that they should gather; but, at the tolling of 
two from the clock-tower, a dense cloud of them hovered 
over the piazza, and made the ground, the eaves of the 
Campanile, and every sill, buttress, projection, and capital, 
black as they fluttered down, and army after army crowded 
upon the others so closely that I could not escape grati- 
fying conviction. 

Venice has less attraction in its churches, perhaps, than 
an}'^ other Italian capital. Its topographical paradoxes are 
the cynosure, and, being a seaport town, it loses all drowsy 
religious odor in the bustle of its traders. St. John and 
St. Paul is worthy of consideration, as it served as the 
Westminster of Venice, inasmuch as the vaults of the 
doges are here, and here their funeral service was ever sol- 
emnized. The Frari is attractive as containing the mau- 
solea of Titian and Canova, and, indeed, every temple of 
divine worship in the noiseless city is a treasure-house of 
art. But what have I to do with art and architecture here 
in the presence of the Bride of the Adriatic, where the sea 
flows all around? — the sea, that was wedded by the duke 
nine centuries ago, and yet continues in its joyous current, 
no older, no feebler ; the sea, that crawls about the churches, 
and palaces, and prisons, leaving the saliva of its salty 
tongue upon their foundation-stones; the sea, that floats 
one into dreams and nurses sweet memory in its murmur. 



26 



302 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER LX. 

On Como's lake the snnset fell, 

Then passed away in golden flame, 
And fair o'er vine and olive dell 

The star through purple shadows came, 
"While far o'er leagues of twilight gloom, 

The Alps still burned in rosy glow, 
And mirrored back, like scattered bloom, 

Lay, shining in the wave below." 

Milan. Cadenabbia on Lake Como, June, 1878. 

I DO not s£iy that there is notliing interesting in Milan 
save the Cathedral ; but that it is nri}' only vivid impression. 
] saw it first at the twilight hour, when tlie shadows of 
iiiglit had softened evei'y line of its thousands of statues 
(some authorities say over 2000, others 8000, I did not 
pause to count them), mellowed each Gothic turret that 
crowns the roof, and cast a gauze of tenderness over the 
entire structure as it couched against the witching blue 
sky, where its graceful lineaments were traced in a fret- 
work of stone as airy and delicate as the finest lace. I rode 
round and round to gratif}^ the passion its etliereal beauties 
had kindled into life, and at every wing and buttress the 
marvel grew. The myriads of marble angels, saints, sol- 
dieis, and statesmen, also popes, painters, and sculptors 
mingled amongst its many folds and interw( aviug lines, 
seemed the work of celestial art. Its many pierciug spires 
looked the ephemeral pinnacles of some fairy palace. In 
the holy dusk and sombre decline of day it resembled a 
frozen poem, an anthem, or a drama in marble. The ex- 
terior had reduced me to a state of revery, so my mood 
was in harmony with the religious glamour and haze of 
incense within, when I pushed back the great doors, and 
found myself incontinently yielding to the bewildering in- J 
fluence. While it lacks all of the ostentatious adornment i 
of the great 8t. Peter's in Rome, it is this very chastity that 
lends the grace of sanctity that the greatest Roman cathe- 
dral can never claim with its garish glory. The one is a 
trorcreous palace, where art and wealth have been exhausted, 
the other a classic temple that inspires prayer. I no longer ^ 
wonder at the armies of papal devotees in this Catholic 
countrj' ; the religion is so [ileasing, calm, and restful. As 
1 stood a few feet within the portals, upon the ricli mosaic 
floor, the lofty vaulted roof above and the regal banners 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 303 

and paintings hanging upon every pillar of i2:ronpe(l columns, 
I was spellbound by the spirit of lioliness enthroned in ray 
bosom, and as I unconsciously obeyed the promptings of 
my heart and knelt, I could have sighed m}' soul away in 
one eternal apostrophe to my God. 

There are no jewelled shrines nor frescoed panels, no 
Russian marbles nor Eastern alabaster here. The arches 
of the roof, the altar, and capitals of the pillars, from which 
start hundreds of statues, are wrought in an interminable 
filigree of stone, so pure, so cold, so hoary, that the golden 
light that falls in semitones through the great colored glass 
window over the entrance euphonizes all into one oratorio. 
1 said, " This must be the mansion of the All-merciful, the 
peace and rest of Heaven is upon me." The cause of my 
supreme content seemed something palpable, and inadver- 
tently I groped the air for a tangible influence ; a maze of 
holy incense was absorbing and bearing off my earthiness 
in its mesmerism, when I was aroused to a sense of chill 
and darkness. As I passed out I longed for the morrow 
when I might return. 

But with the dawn came Corpus Domini. High solemni- 
ties were to be celebrated, the city was in gala-day garb, 
and thousands of every class thronged the streets. There 
were militarj^ and ecclesiastical parades, crowds of people, 
bands of music, clouds of incense ; the shops were closed 
and a general spirit of frolic prevailed. The Cathedral did 
not seem the holy of holies in which I had meditated the 
nigiit before ; the crowd desecrated it, and so fearing the 
subtleties of tlie j^esterday might be quite undone by the 
imi)ending ceremonies and thickening throng, I hurried 
away. 

Milan is so pure and clean and elegant one might readily 
be persuaded he had passed out of Italy, proverbial for dirt. 
The white houses and gay shops lencl to it a Parisian ap- 
])earance. But there are ample recollections of Italy in the 
Victor Emanuel Galler}^, the statue of Cavour, and the 
many monuments to local celebrities. 

This gallery is a palatial arcade of shops in the form of 
a Latin cross, connecting the Cathedral piazza with the La 
Scala opera-house. The fa§ades of the stores are florid with 
scrolls and jalousies and caryatides, the overarching canopy 
of glass admits the light of da3', and by night the dome 
looms out like some southern meteor, dazzling in its two 
thousand gas-jets, casting a resplendence over the great 
frescoes of the rotunda, and a radiance over the archetypes 



304 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

of tlie presiding artistic and political genii. The great ser- 
vices of the late Eiiii)eror, Garibaldi, and Cavoiir, are com- 
memorated throughout Italy bj statues, galleries, paintings, 
and edifices. As I write Cavour is looking at me with his 
bronze face from his pedestal of granite, where Fame sits 
carving his name witii an indelible st3'lus. 

The La Scala is closed for the summer, but I went to 
enjoy its vast proportions, the majesty of the Emperor's 
box, and the stage where Adelina Patti has achieved her 
greatest triumphs. Tiie immense auditorium, and stage as 
large as a circus arena, somewhat modifies the oppressive 
ornamentation of the tiers and boxes. Directly op[)osile 
the stage, situated in what we call the balcony, is the royal 
loge, bearing the crown and princel}^ crimson hangings ; in 
the vestibule are statues of Malibran, Rossini, and Doni- 
zetti. But it was at the La Verme tliat I passed such a 
delightful evening with " La Sonnambula," and though a 
second-class opera house was exceedingly capacious. Jt 
is evidently a summer establishment, where all the gentle- 
men smoke, and the ladies attend in ordinary street cos- 
tume. After the oi)era proper came a protracted ballet, — the 
opera in Italy is generally succeeded by a ballet, — I may 
call it a pantomime ballet, "Discovery of America by Co- 
lumbo." Very unique, interesting, and instinctive. The 
dancing was the poetry of motion, and the dumb show the 
eloquence of graceful silence. Without the aid of speech 
their gestures were so intelligible as to make a language by 
itself. 

All the Italian cities boast of fine parks and drives. That 
of Milan is very beautiful, the course for the carriages and 
horsemen being ovei; the ramparts ; the top of the original 
militar^^ wall that hemmed in the desirable city from for- 
aging despoilers. Here the nobility and gentry come to 
ventilate their regality in the soft Italian gloaming. To 
vie with each other's crests and liveries seems their heaven, 
and as the dimensions are limited, they ride round and 
round the park like pupi)ets in a toy circus. The Milanese 
may dress plainly, he may live economically, he may even 
dine without macaroni, but not to own an equipage and 
drive upon the bastions is a sign of shameful impecu- 
niosity. 

I dreaded visiting other churches in the fear of dispel- 
ling the enthusiastic thraldom of the Cathedral, but I could 
not leave Milan without seeino- Leonardo da Vinci in his 
most inspired work. My only errand to the S. Marie delle 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 305 

Grazie was to this enrl. I cannot rhapsodize here, as the 
noted fresco of the Last Supper is so vilel}'' defaced as 
almost to obliterate all original lines. I have heard of 
travellers being lost in admiration of the master-touches 
of this glorious composition, and transported by grief at 
the passion portrayed. I freely confess I saw only the dust 
and ashes of a once noble monument, and if there were a 
shade of sad regret, it was for the shameful purpose to 
which the apartment had been devoted by Napoleon, and 
the ravages perpetrated by the monks. There were copy- 
its there by the dozen, seemingly to portray the conception 
of the great master with pleasing skill. As I quitted its 
presence, children who could scarcely articulate their first 
syllables had been taught to ask charity at the very church 
door, and to glorify your soul in choice Italian if you re- 
fused them largess. 

But the episode to be most earnestly remembered was 
my experience at St. Ambrose, originally a heathen temple 
of Bacchus; old in history, Oriental in form, and odorous 
of incense. There was a sti'ange combination of pagan 
and Christian antiquities. It was a Testa da^^ and the 
faithful worshippers were gathered about a glittering casket 
behind the high altar, extending their rosaries, prayer- 
books, bandannas, and other articles to a priest, who passed 
the objects over the sides of the glass and brass bindings, 
returned them to their owners, and received pennies for 
polishing off the sacred cabinet with the handkerchiefs of 
the children of Light. 1 dropped three coppers into the 
'plate, and had my Protestant linen rubbed over the holy 
brass, and now I am afraid to have it washed, as I am not 
sure but the pi'ocess will destroy the odor of sanctity, so 
it must be enshrined amongst my sacred relics. 

It seems incongruous to emerge from such a ceremonj'- 
in a temple hung with ancient tapestry, to a street where 
American trapaways are as familiar as signs of Singer's 
and Howe's sewing machines ; and these are whizzing from 
the Seine to the Tiber, and fiom the Ural Mountains in 
White Russia to the Jura Hills in Switzerland. 

At the northwest marginal line of the city stands the 
Arch of Peace, proud troph}^ of Napoleon's occupation.. 
The marked contrast of the springing bronze horses mount- 
ing the snowy arc, on the one side, to tjq^ify the glory 
of the Great Captain of his age, with the modern trophy 
in honor of his successor, the last emperor's Italian cam- 
paigns, was suggestive and painful. 

26* 



306 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

The town of Como, distant from Milan by rail about one 
hour and three-quarters on one of the most beautiful lakes 
in the north of Italy, was extolled by Yirgil before the 
birth of Christ. Passing up the lake it is one succession 
of transcendent panoramas. The mountains rise to a 
height of seven thousand feet from tiie extreme margin of 
the lake, which is kept constantly full in summer by the 
melted snows from the various altitudes by which it is 
hemmed in, and abounds in fish. The trout have none of 
the delicac}^ of the American or English fisii ; the immense 
size to which they grow frequently equals twenty pounds, 
rendering them tough and tasteless. 

It is a declining manufacturing town, dusty and smoky, 
where the industrious inhabitants are engaged at the silk- 
loom. 

Como is the Newi)ort of Milan, and lying on both banks 
of the lake are the luxurious residences of the Milanese 
aristocracy. They look like fairy abodes, swinging be- 
tween the olive heights and azure mirror, embowered in 
densest pine and wreathing vines. There is a spiritual ex- 
istence about all these southern French and Italian towns; 
the air, the water, the sk3', the stars, the vegetation, and 
tlie flowers are all sacred or semi-tropical. The hamlets of 
the Lake of Como are to me the last expression of this 
thought. It is an olla p(drida of aristocratic villas, gar- 
dens, vineyards, mountains, and defiles, and seated by its 
waters I tind myself unconsciously murmuring the words 
of Melnotte in the "Lady of Lyons," when he pictures 
Como to his sweetheart as his earthly paradise. 

My first impressions of Como left me destitute of power 
to describe them. I saw the lake first in tlie twilight hush 
of June, from the iron balcony of the Belle View on the 
western side in the exquisite town of Cadenabbia. Sailing 
up the lake from the dirty capital of the province on a 
crowded local steamer, if you were apt to believe Bulwer's 
rhapsod3^of the inland water supply an innocent falsehood, 
his entrancing picture would be sublimated into a sublime 
reality upon locating at one of the many beguiling settle- 
ments. 1 can easily conceiA^e his exact emotions writing 
as 1 do now in the sweet subjection of this transcendent 
spot. 

The lake seems mountain-liound on four sides without 
any visible outlet. The day in Milan was as hot as Africa; 
the evening at Cadenabbia as mild as the close of an Ame- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 301 

rican autumn day. It is like a painted picture in a glow- 
ing melodrama ; and so perfect is it in all the minutiye of 
scenic effect, that it seems to have been rehearsed for my 
special delectation. Below me a i)icturesque pageant; the 
lake lies as still and waveless as a baby in its earliest softest 
slumber, save the starting and flashing oars of the tiny 
boats sent out at intervals with their gayly dressed freight. 
One of these little shells has for its oarsman a beautiful 
girl, carrying out her Mged, white-haired motlier on tiie 
tranquil water ; another floated from its prow the emblem 
of mj'^ own dear country, with its bright red stripes and 
its sparkling stars ; another has a company of English 
peoi)le, the women in their heavy ulsters, the men sutibcat- 
ing under the Turkish towel veils wound about their hats. 
A mile across the lake is a cluster of white cottages, where 
the starry lights, coming out one by one, and trebled in the 
glass}' waters of the Itike, are touching in their silent beauty, 
while across the old hills sound the audible throbbings of 
distant church chimes. It is a scene of pensive and sooth- 
ing and consoling majesty, and if any influeuce were needed 
to make it more impressive it is furnished by the alternate 
changes of the mountains as the afternoon sobers into 
evening, and as the evening darkens into night. First the 
"golden glow of the sinking sun, then the violet of the de- 
parted god of day and the looming shadows of the hills in 
the water, then the gra}^ shroud over the more distant Alps, 
and finally night, with its ebon veil, gradually studded with 
the same stars that have shone for ten thousand thousand 
3'eais; and now nothing is seen except the flash of the light 
in the boats like crimson and yellow fire-flies clancii.g in the 
waves. 

The hotel is evidently an old castle. Stone stairs, marble 
and mosaic floors, frescoed salons, and a marvellously lovely 
garden around it. Ultra neatness and elegance of style 
pervade the establishment. Adjacent is the Villa Carlotta, 
now the property of Duke George of Saxe Meiningen, 
filled with magnificent statues by Thorwaldsen and Canova, 
and adorned with costl}^ objects of virtu. 

To describe Oadenabbia and the Villa Carlotta is to pic- 
ture all the other hotels and villas bordering the lovely 
expanse of water for thirty miles. All the lakes of Northern 
Italy are sources of wealth to the great cities in their neigh- 
borhood, and Maggiore and Lugano have the same peculiar 
seductions of atmosphere, colors, foliage, and architecture. 
To these miniature inland seas flock the culture and art 



308 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

of all the word; and I met many of the Bonanza kings of 
my own country in the trains and boats travelling in this 
lovely region. All the shores of these mirrored waters are 
gemmed with the places of titled and untitled millionaires, 
and these are so beautiful and so finished, that if nature 
were not herself still more so, one wonld take the whole 
panorama for a painted and polished medallion ; but as it 
is, though man excels himself in his inventions and his 
expenditures, God is the rejd master, because His works 
ai'e not only more lovely, but more lasting. 



L E T T E R L X I . 

" 'T was late, — the sun had almost shone 
His last and best, when I ran on, 
Anxious to reach that splendid view 
Ijctbre the daybeams quite withdrew ; 
'Twas at this instant — while there glowed 

This last, in tensest gleam of light — 
Snddenly, through the opening road, 

The valley burst upon my sight ! 
That glorious valley, with its lake, 

And Alps on Alps in clusters swelling 
Mighty and pure and fit to make 

The ramparts of a Godhead's dwelling !" 

Tom Moore. 

Geneva, June, 1878. 

The ride from Milan to Turin, the capital of Piedmont, 
is through an exquisite teriitory of rice plantations, where 
the fresh beryl stiletto-shaped leaf rises like a world of 
miniature church si>ires above its bed of water — the Alpine 
stieams that are turned through the fields to irrigate aiul 
flood them. 1 enjoyed the beautiful vegetable more in the 
fields than I did on the table, where it appeared in every 
disofuise. 

There are many historical monuments and memories by 
the way, as Piedmont seems to have been the destined arena 
of warlike action, and the focus of the struggles of the 
nation with almost everj' power and in every epoch. But 
these events appear to lose prestige in sight of the lovely 
maize and rice of the plains, and the vines and cocooneries 
of the hills, guarded by the uncouth crucifixes and heathen 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 309 

symbols wliich still hold a conspicuous place ou the Italian 
farms. 

Turin is only a fraction smaller than Milan, but has none 
of her gayety, lightness, nor delicacy. It is a dull city, and 
had it not been for the pageant of St. John the Baptist 
would have seemed a slow and slothful town. What im- 
pressed me most were the number and excruciating atti- 
tudes of the statues. With one or two exceptions these 
marble and bronze monsters seem to have been taken at a 
moment when they had been either too intimately asso- 
ciated with Bacchus or writhing in an agony of mortal 
pain. Their faces are contorted, and their forms distorted 
and their postures to m}^ mind most awkward and ungainly. 

There are fine sliops under the arcades in the Via di Po, 
but they have a gloomy appearance and even in the Piazza 
Victor Emanuel and the Piazza Castello life seemed to be 
constrained and cold. 

The ecclesiastical parade on the feast of the nativity of 
John the Evangelist was the reigning religious festa. A 
long file of nuns, monks, cardinals, bishops, old women, 
boys chanting Latin verses and carrying lighted candles, 
completed the demonstrating concourse, while thousands 
of every denomination thronged the sidewalk, and as the 
consecrated wafer passed the faithful Catholics prostrated 
themselves in the dust. Down went the ladies in their 
silks and laces on the pavements, curbs, and even in the 
gutters; men followed their example regardless of their 
paraphernalia, devotees to the mandate of the church. The 
excess of these exhibitions has somewhat moderated since 
the reforms of Victor Emanuel; previously, the credulous 
flung themselves before the holy image whether in alley or 
ditch, with the servility of the benighted Hindoo, who 
threw himself under the wheels of his Juo^g^ernaut. The 
Italian asks if unalloyed faith should pick nice occasioiis 
and pleasing places for its worship? 

To ride tlirough the pensive paths of the public gardens 
and cross the long bridge that spans the Po, or ascend the 
heights crowned b}- the Capucini monastery, from which 
an extended view is gained of the winding waters and city 
beneath, and its Alpine background, where the ancient 
giants lean their snowy caps against the soft blue dome, 
was the onl}'- sweet divertisement I enjoyed in Turin. 

All that might be remembered of Turin is dwarfed by 
the memorable journe}^ between that city and Geneva, the 
passage of the Mont Cenis tunnel being the chief object 



310 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

of interest There was a long succession of tunnels, with 
here and there a glimpse of wild, rugged landscape from 
the start. The Valley of the Dora lay sweetly peaceful 
amongst its vine-clad hills, over-frowned by its lofty moun- 
tains, where the goats and donkeys were skipping the crags 
and trudging the rugged hills. 

At the little village of Bardonchia the ascent of the ter- 
rible height of the Alps began. It was over these hitherto 
inaccessible mountain ranges that Napoleon seventy years 
ago carried his armies and poured them down into the 
plains of Piedmont and Lombardy, thus making himself 
master of all Italy ; — these altitudes, through which I was to 
penetrate in a few minutes, aided by the mighty modern work 
b}' which these unattainable heights are pierced. Higher 
and still higher we mounted, sometimes skimming along 
the sharp ledge of a spur of rock, then hanging upon a 
thread of straight oblique granite, and again i)erched upon 
what seemed the culminating pinnacle of the stupendous 
range, while, beyond, swift mountain streams wound their 
waters like satin ril)bons about the gray rocks. At my 
side foaming torrents gushed and leaped like angry mon- 
sters, carrying everything in their course; the little white 
cities of the plains seeming toy tovvns from the airy height, 
while beneath, great chasms yawned, black and bottomless 
as eternity. 

The experience of passing through the tunnel was new 
and unexpected. Tlie former tunnels had been close, 
noisome, and dark, and in this most formidable of all I 
anticipated awful possibilities; a collision, a caving in of 
roof, perhaps suffocation. But this almost supernatural 
construction, eight miles long, was so light and well ven- 
tilated that the atmosphere was as pure as the air of a 
lady's boudoir. Great windows were cut here and there 
in the rocks, and large lanterns cast a pleasant glow 
tliroush the Ions cavern. We entered from the south, 
4163 feet above sea level, and maintained this height until 
we gradually descended on the right at a level of 3802, so 
that our mean averaije was 4093 feet below the surface of 
the mountain. The amazing; feature of this wonderful ex- 
cavation is the admirable manner in wiiich it is ligthed, 
ventilated, and drained. The engineers started at oppo- 
site sides, and so accurate was their survey that the woik- 
men with their diamond-pointed drill met plumb in the 
middle. It was the inspiration of genius defying time and 
nature. » 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 311 

Immediately upon emerging from the heart of the eternal 
Alps we halted at Modane, the frontier town between Italy 
and France, to submit to the annoying examination of 
passports. Perhaps those who rave against our country 
have not considered all these uneccessary vexations abroad. 
While between our respective States we are one people 
from zone to zone, and may travel from the Atlantic shore 
to the Pacific slope without question or stoppage by gov- 
ernment official or change of coin ; here there are official 
customs and sentinels at every frontier, and as many coins 
or currency as dialects. 

Now we were in France again, and Gallic cleanliness, sanc- 
tifying convent, and castle battlements were mingled with 
the wild sublimity of Alpine scenery, luxurious vineyards, 
and fashionable resorts, such as Aix les Bains; and the 
azure cr3'stal lake, along the border of which the train 
rushed rnpidly for twelve miles, following the blue flow of 
the placid water. A short, heavenly ride in France; then, 
3'ielding to another frontier pause, we were whisked into 
Switzerland, the old curiosity shop of the Almight}' Crea- 
tor, About fifty miles oft' lay Geneva, chief of the republic, 
city of John Calvin, Rousseau, and Voltaire, whose envi- 
rons are memorable for many interesting souvenirs. As 
we approached, in the sweet, odorous sunset of June, I had 
my first glimpse of Mont Blanc. The fading beams of the 
sun gave to the distant snowpeaks first a glowing pink, mel- 
lowing into a deep violet, and finally sobering into gray. 
Nature's mysterious machinery was profoundly touching 
by its awful manifestations. 

1 found Geneva in a glow of preparation for the celebra- 
tion of the centenary of the death of its great social re- 
former, Jean Jacques Rousseau. Tiie city was in a regalia 
of flags of the nations ; wreaths were suspended from street 
to street, and triumphal arches in every square; surging 
crowds bustled each other in the highways and on the 
quays. The pageant, which I viewed from my window on 
Sunday, was conspicuous only for the absence of military 
of any description; a few of the bands were good, but the 
long parade of trudging citizens was monotonous. Three 
days were devoted to the festival, and evidently the whole 
population joined in the demonstration. Rousseau had 
none of the genius or courage of Voltaire, neither was he a 
republican like the sage of Ferney ; but what recked the 
people of Geneva, so the}' could extract a frolic from the 
memory of the man who was born in their town the greater 



312 PICTURES AND TORTRAITS 

part of two centuries ago? Wliat did the>' know of him ? 
As little as they cared. The first day of joUit}^ tlie town 
swam in a sea of glory — speeches, cannons, music, and 
everything that was wild and exciting, nothing really clas- 
sic or good. The women danced quadrilles and waltzes 
in tlie streets to pul)lic music, and the country dames strut- 
ted in tlie line with the men, while at night there was a 
tolerable illumination of the cit}'^ ; the varied colors of the 
lights, red, green, blue, and yellow, in long rows upon the 
bridge, and shining from the boats npon the lake, contrived 
to make a dazzling spectacle. Before midnight a pande- 
monium of drunken Swiss choruses began that continued 
till next morning, and, as 1 lay in my disturbed demi-slum- 
])er, I thought of their inevitable retribution for this foolish 
dissipation, and then marvelled how many of these wild 
bacchantes thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau. 

I fear the good Svvitzers are not as graceful and success- 
ful in art as the volatile French. Geneva, as a rule, I 
should say, was a quiet town of manufactories — a town of 
musical-boxes and watches. These greet us at every corner 
and window, and demand attention. It has many of the 
French and Italian characteristics of architecture and 
topography, very little of the purely Swiss ; even the 
market-women speak good French. There are many fine 
hotels and cafes, rows of noble shops, and broad streets, 
but the chief interest of the Swiss capital lies, not in the 
city, but in its surroundings — its odorous wa3-side paths 
and wildering waters. 

On an eminence a few miles from the city I looked 
down upon a lovely freak of nature, — the marriage of the 
blue, arrowy Rlione and the gray, ashen Arve. The city 
itself lay mapped out before me, a lovely queen seated in a 
lap of hills, crowned with her snowy diadem of Mont Blanc, 
while all around was green and peaceful. At the end of 
the lake the two streams mingle and flow on in one course, 
sleep in the same bed, and yet each preserving its own 
peculiar color and character for many miles. I had wit- 
nessed the amalgamation of other great streams wlicre they 
V)lent naturally into one, but here the unexplained phe- 
nomenon of two great tributaries of the ocean, flowing from 
the same mountain sources, joining, yet forcibly two cur- 
rents, set me to moralizing and making personal applica- 
tions. It was nothing more than a symbol of the marriage 
of man, where bodies, not souls, are united. A little vilhige 
occupied the delta of land between the two waters, where 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 313 

large henps of stone and sand lay on the banks, seeming 
to liave been taken from the basin of the Arve, and on the 
extreme shore sat an artist amidst the liandiwork of God. 
The memory of the picture would be complete had not a 
girl demanded a franc for the simple privilege for looking 
at one of the municipal attractions of Geneva. It seemed 
very like exactins; a fee from a strans^er for the ria^ht to 
enjoy Fairmount Park. 

Through a few miles of aromatic lanes we came to the 
gates of Adolph Rothschild's imposing chateau at Pieghny, 
but it was closed against visitors, so we could not even 
peep over the great, granite fortifications that surrounded 
the estate. In building these grim stone walls the object 
is to exclude obtruders, and the effect is to create a depres- 
sion and contempt in the minds of travellers. Such feudal 
selfishness is particularly disgraceful in the towns of Eng- 
land and the Continent. I have ever been of the opinion 
that the dull stone walls around Girard College are an 
insult to the people and to the memory of the illustrious 
Frenchman ; these barriers are only for prisons and mad- 
houses. So where I anticipated a revel amongst art and 
wealth I met a dark disappointment, and obtained not a 
glimpse of the many delicacies I had read of in books and 
magazines. 

We proceeded to Coppet, the home of the celebrated 
Madame De Stael ; the home where her childhood was 
passed when her father was a Parisian banker; the home to 
which she retreated with her confidant, Benjamin Constant, 
and here maintained a court of her own when Napoleon 
banished her from her paradise in Paris, after having been 
the nucleus of the highest diplomatic and intellectual cir- 
cles, while her father was Minister of Finance to Louis 
XYI. The estate is now tiie property of her grandson. 
Due de Broglie, present reactionary member of the French 
Senate, but in a little chapel hidden by a grove the body of 
the French Pythoness is buried by the side of her father. 

The vestibule of the house is pure white marble. A spa- 
cious flight of glistening steps led to the entresol, where a 
statue of M. Necker, with cynical nose and receding chin, 
stands guard. The family portraits were hung in the main 
sitting room. The fine painting, by David, of this goddess 
of love, from which all the photographs and engravings are 
struck that float the hemispheres, is three-quarter length. 
Her hair is arranged in numerous little curls, lifted from her 
neck and forehead by a band ; her dress white, embellished 
21 



314 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

with gold embroidery, and a gaudy scarf carelessly thrown 
over her shoulders ; in her hand she bears the inevitable 
and significant myrtle sprig. There are various other 
models of her scattered through the apartments, in curious 
guises and character ; this bright constellation of intellect 
had the fatal vice of her sex, vanity. Her husband and 
son hang side by side; the first, though a man of rank, was 
allowed to figure very little in her destiny. Her daughter, 
afterward the Duchess de Broglie, was a superbl_y beau- 
tiful woman, as shown by her statuette and portrait. The 
library, containing few of the old books, is interesting on 
account of its associations, and the portraits of herself as 
Corinne ; Raphael, a cop3^ of the original painted by him- 
self; Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the German poet Schlegel, 
who acted as her good friend, adviser, and preceptor of her 
children. Adj(^ining her library was her chamber. The 
walls were upholstered in the old tapestries embroidered 
lor her in her time. Her bed, desk, and other furniture are 
used by the present duchess when she comes from Paris to 
the lovely Swiss hamlet on the northern bank of Lake 
Lenian. 

How many times have these ancestral halls sparkled 
with the wit and beauty of the eighteenth century ! How 
many of life's romances and tragedies have been enacted in 
sport and reality, no living tongue can relate! How many 
times has the beautiful Recamier swayed in the poetry of 
motion in these salons! How many times have the voices 
of Constant, Talleyrand, and Schlegel vibrated in this re- 
treat ! How many times have the powerful oratory and 
dazzling energies of this woman turned to tears and moans 
in these very halls ! 

The beautiful borders of the lake, and the sweet shady 
roads that intersect the neighborhood are punctuated by his- 
torical chateaux and baronial estates. Far more interest- 
ing to me was Ferney, the home of the cynic Voltaire, tlian 
Nyon, where the celebrated adherents of Kapoleon I found 
a refuge, and the chateau formerly the property of Joseph 
Bonaparte, and that belonging to Prince Jerome Napoleon. 
Through a bridle-path, where the wreathing vines of France 
bordered our left, while the golden grain of Switzerland 
waved on our right, we found Ferney, a village on the 
Swiss frontier, in French territory; a beautiful hamlet full 
of French habits, and although only divorced from its 
Swiss consort by a narrow bar of highway, marked by all 
the Gallic peculiarities. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 315 

Need I say Yoltaire was a radical, an extreme republican, 
a non-conformist, a deist, a free-thinker, and a special friend 
of Washington and Franklin? On the 30th of May he 
was dead one hundred years, and the Liberals of the Con- 
tinent rose to do him honor, to the utter disgust of the 
Catholics. Besides, to worship hira was to protest against 
Rousseau 

The grounds of the savanfs estate are preserved in all 
their original beauty. Rose vines clamber over arbors and 
form fairy retreats, separated from vast parterres of gaudy 
flowers, planted in symbolic devices, by well-rolled gravel 
w^alks. Voltaire's famous arched bower is a masterwork of 
botanical art, where the evergreens interlace and form a 
canopy roof, while at intervals windows are cut iifthe walls 
of folia2:e to admit the light to this strano-e man's loved 
snuggery. The rooms shown to visitors face a noble ter- 
race, while there is an immediate plateau of small flowers 
and box edging. Away off lies the city of Geneva, the 
frosted-silver peak of Mont Blanc, and a circular range of 
rude hills. 

Rooms burdened with luxuries, still there was the same 
weird, mysterious spirit pervading them that always was 
the grotesque expression of his features and life. In the 
first apartment was the fac-simile of his mausoleum, finely 
executed, a spectral ornament ; also a colossal bronze bust 
of himself, with keen French face, and the walls were rich 
with the originals of eminent artists. In his chamber were 
gathered his literarj^ favorites and contemporaries. Over 
his bed within shadow of the curtains, was a fine head of 
LeKain, the celebrated actor. Above the mantel hung a 
large^allegorical subject by Du Reissy, of Melpomene — muse 
of Tragedy — leading Voltaire from the temple of Fame to 
present him to Ai)ollo. At the base Humanity, Liberty, 
all the virtues and graces paid court to the illustrious 
French poet, while still lower Tyranny, Priestcraft, Bigotry, 
and Hypocrisy were fljang in terror before his scathing de- 
nunciations. Republican though he was, Catharine of 
Russia and Frederick of Prussia were his nearest friends, 
whose pictures are hanging above his bed, presented by 
themselves. But greater powers than kings or queens were 
there, — Washington presented by Lafayette, Franklin 
painted in Paris, Isaac Newton, Milton, Racine, D'Alem- 
bert, Diderot, and an embroidery executed by the honorary 
maids of Qifeen Catharine, and presented by her. On tlie 
side of the wall opposite the door hung a proof engraving 



316 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

of the coronation of A^oltaire in the Theatre Frangaise, 
Marcli 30th, IttS, upon the occasion of the production of 
one of his immortal tragedies. I must not be understood 
as speaking of his religion, which was doubtful, nor of his 
virtues which were disputed ; I only recall his eccentric 
and dazzling genius. 



LETTER LXII. 

"I liad a dream, which was not all a dream." 

****** 

"And dreams in their development have breath, 
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy ; 
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, 
They take a weight from off our waking toils, 
They do divide our being ; they become 
A portion of ourselves as of our time. 
And look like heralds of eternity." 

Byron. 

' Lausanne, July, 1878. 

Mature makes amends to Switzerland for the stern 
severity of her winters by the magnificent lakes which she 
sets like so many emeralds among her luxuriant and gigan- 
tic mountains and mysterious glaciers. With these words 
upon my lips I stepped upon the deck of the clean and 
graceful steamer Mont Blanc that was to carry me from 
Geneva over the placid waters of Leman. I think that was 
last week, but it seems ages ago; in the interval I have had 
a strange dream that appeared to cover centuries. 

The day was perfect; perhaps slightly cool for the season, 
but so brilliantly transparent that life was a luxury with 
the double attractions of earth and sky. I was just as 
keenly sensible of all these beauties as I had ever been, 
and when the unexplained lethargy overtook me, and I fell 
asleep, I remember a little prancing greyhound at mj- side, 
and its elongated shadow reflected in the sunshine on the 
qua3^ My dream was not a fancy where all is deliciously 
incoherent; nor a fine frenzy, where all is wildly romantic; 
neither was it one of those flimsy somnambulistic vagaries 
where scores of incidents and objects are thrust out of 
sight — even the most attractive — to make place for equally 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 317 

shadow}^ successors. It was not one of those ecstatic jum- 
bles where phantom forms appear and vanisli in a will-o'-tlie- 
wisp sort of way, and when we waken nothing remains but 
a vague sensation akin to the memory of a haunting con- 
science. Every episode of my strange trance was natural 
and permanent, the only abnormal phase was the continual 
growth of the past into the i)resent and the retrograde of 
the [)resent into the past. There was a conglomerate of 
eras that would have puzzled an ancient Egyptian magi- 
cian. 

I remember blue-blonsed porters wheeling baggage along 
the banks of the beautiful quay under the shadow of the 
chestnut trees, passengers coming on board, a clatter of 
French tongues bidding adieu and au revoir^ and two hand- 
some Frenchwomen in black and white striped silk dresses, 
who tramped the deck like halberdiers. In my sweetly 
drifting unconsciousness the striped dresses, martial tread, 
and loud air of these women annoyed me. Just as oblivion 
was wrapping about me and bearing me off to Elysium, 
those dreadful linear robes that had grown into checkers 
in my weakening vision, and the stalk of those recurring 
four legs, interrupted the dolce far niente like some hor- 
rible phantom of disordered reason. But my most vivid 
recollection of this di'owsy period was of a French family 
seated near me, the proprietors of the little dancing grey- 
hound. 

At last all confusion seemed to cease, and as the whistle 
lilew and the boat dropped off the quay, J floated with it 
into the peaceful waters of Lethe. For a short time all was 
blank, but as I slept I dreamed, — dreamed of gliding easily 
over a great blue breast of crj-stal water, bordered by lofty 
banks, terraced and planted with vines of changing purple 
and emerald. Pomegranates, figs, and laurel trees grew as 
luxuriously as I had seen them in Italy, and great ridges 
of pine added the element of- strength to all this brilliant 
and romantic beauty. Here and there, in little dales of 
tender sward, white cottages nestled like buds hidden from 
the rude world by their hoods of moss, trains of steam cars 
seemed to follow the course of our boat along the land's 
edge, mountain goats and fantastically arrayed shepherds 
trudged the ascending and winding paths over the rugged 
hills. Large white stone hotels, standing upon the very 
water's brink, blinding in the sun's bright rays, were du- 
})licated in the crjstal world over which I seemed to be 
travelling; everything — boats, people, mountains — was re- 

27* 



318 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

fleeted in this odd azure cave over which I soared, until 
they appeared sounding the very depths witii their mighty 
shadows. The heaven above and the water below were of 
a shade so marvellously harmonious that I wondered from 
which each had borrowed its beauty. To add awe to this 
enrapturing picture there was in the far background a 
chain of snow-white mountains, and one peak loomed like 
a mammoth iceberg, far above its compeers. Everybody's 
attention was attracted to it, and in my dream 1 viewed it 
through a lorgnette. There lie stood, the hoary monarch, , 
wrapped in the unwrinkled folds of his snowy mantle. ' 
iSaid I, is tliis the giant of the hills, or the evil genii of the 
spot? So majestically cold and despotic did he look, that 
J lurned from him with a chilling sadness, for as I gazed 1 
traced upon the glacier's polished hips phantom skeletons, 
grinning skulls, and ghostly forms of mortals who had 
been shrouded in the folds of the icy drapery. In their 
si)ectral hands they held scrolls whereon were written in 
wierd characters sad tales of widowed wives and fatherless 
orphans, and others bore extinguished torches of youthful 
ambiticm; horrible chasms yawned grim and frigid, and in 
their depths I seemed to see a mass of fleshless bones, 
broken ladders, and tangled ropes, chastened by the hoar- 
frost into a plaiting of silver. These were the remains of 
philosophers and scientists who had sought to pluck out 
the secrets of this m3^sterious creation for intellectual ad- 
vancement; of aspiring young women who had an infirmity 
f(jr lofty aciventure; of foolhardy travellers and over-trust- 
ful guides. It was beguiling, and at the same time forbid- 
ding, and I turned from it with a shiver of awe; yet I was 
tempted to look and look again, and as I passed on I saw 
on one side, engraven in letters fiercely visible by their 
ultra whiteness and stoniness upon the ghastly entablature, 
' His Inclement 3Iajesty^ Mont Blanch 

We were not the only occupants of this beautiful lake; 
other boats steamed by, laden with passengers, trailing a 
great column of gray smoke after them ; little skitfs hold- 
ing one or two glided by rufl[ling the water with their oars, 
and tiny sails started out from the shore like spotless 
doves fanning with their wings the wave tops. 

On and on we skimmed; chaste bridal towns smiled up- 
on us from every side, ancient and modern poets' names \ 
were written upon each hill, and as I leaned over the tatf- 
rail I saw down in the mirrored waves the images of those 
who, through the inspiration of these same scenes in the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 319 

perished j'-ears, have left us their records upon canvas aud 
parchment. We paused at towns that seemed to lie along 
the lake border and closed in by an amphitheatre of rocks 
piled one on the other to an immense lieight. Sometimes 
a long handsome pier extended far out into the lake to 
which the boat moored, and again we coursed up to the 
very mountain side and anchored by a flight of stone steps 
cut in the rocks, which led to the hotel that seemed to 
hang to sterile crags- and jutting elbows; fairy pavilions 
standing isolated from the mainland on spurs of rock 
were in impressive contrast with the formidable towers 
perched on lofty altitudes, by which they were overlooked. 
At length, after making many insignificant pauses, we 
stopped at a live town; the Alpine streets were filled w^ith 
people, but they all seemed holiday people; there were no 
signs of occupation, and no proletaires treading the paths ; 
they were all well-dressed, well fed, and fat-pocketed pleas- 
ure-seekers, would-be invalids fanned into comparative 
vitality by the salubrious airs and congenial skies, and 
picturesque rowers. On a great board suspended over tiie 
pier gate I read "Ouchy," and this I heard them say was 
the lake-port to Lausanne, which lay over a mile farther 
up in the mountains. 

We steamed off again, and passing exquisite hamlets 
where titled villas fringed the lake I saw old and familiar 
faces and forms at each and every stoppage. They were 
not all people I had known, but many only the life copies 
of well-remembered pictures ; each seemed to have some 
important story in connection with his appearance. French, 
English, German, Austrian, and Belgian nobility, men of 
wealth, and men of letters had sought these sylvan retreats 
as havens of rest or safety. The Bonapartes were all 
there, from the "Little Cori)oral" to the young Prince 
Lnperial, and in my dream, it did not seem strange that 
the exile of St. Helena should be promenading with the 
dethroned Empress Eugenie, nor that 1 should pass Mad- 
ame de Sta'el and Rousseau within the same hour. All 
the celebrities of the Old W^orld seemed clustered about 
these enchanting spots. Byron followed me persistently 
like some elfin sprite. The others I saw and lost again to 
meet strange faces as I did their scenic surroundings, but 
before, behind, above, below, and interweaving all else, was 
that perpetuallj'^ recurring poet's face and name. It made 
of my dream a horrible nightmare by its constant pursuit 
and my fruitless efibrts to escape it. The rocks were 



320 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

girdled by tlie famous name; on the bine capitals of 
heaven the minstrel's face was medallioned; as the waves 
broke under our keel a hundred images shone in the eddies, 
birds lisped his verses in their song, and the waters mur- 
mured his words, while he Inmself, 1 thought, appeared in 
every town following and pointing to his own glory. He 
seemed defrauding Kousseau of his little wood at Clarens, 
Voltaire of his residence at Feme}', and Madame de Stael 
of Coppet. 

We stopped at a plnce called Yevey. This, I saw, was a 
fashionable summer resort by the host of flounced and 
ribboned ladies, — Americans too, I could see by their deli- 
cate beauty, and was sure of it when I heard one of my 
fellovv-tiavellers exclaim, "Wiiat stylish young girls!" I 
cannot say why, but even in my sleep I took this phrase as 
a personal offence, as I knew "stylish" was only applied 
to my countrywomen by foreigners, and then 1 vaguely 
dreaded hearing voices pitched in the highest and thinnest 
register float out from the shore where the bevy of crisp- 
ruffled ladies were clustering. Indeed, it seemed as if I 
were transported to Cape May or Long Branch; still, there 
was a mingling of foreign elements that made it cosmo- 
politan, in the slender fl3'ing flags, and the great signs of 
''hotel" and "pe??82on," and the well-drilled waiters, with 
here and there scattered over the sloping sward an invalid 
English matron or a languishing Russian countess silentlj'' 
ignoring the nonchalent Americans. As we paused here f 
thought 1 saw the dancing canine of the French family", 
after sliding out of the laps of the ladies and capering 
about the knees of the gentlemen with careless grace, glee- 
fully skip on shore, believing we were to lose our compan- 
ions, I found to my dismay his owners on board as the 
boat backed into the water, while the poor little Italian 
dog stood mournful l}'^ measuring the distance between the 
wharf and the receding steamer. When the French family 
discovered the melancholy fugitive, the dowager was 
frozen into dignified and majestic surprise, the young hus- 
band of her daughter was transfixed with amazement, 
while his gentlemen friends gave vent to shrieks of laughter, 
and last of all the suppressed anger -of the young wife, as 
she flashed rebukes upon her culprit husband for neglecting 
her pet, and fastened her indignant stare upon the loud { 
merriment of her own friends, while disappearing in the 
distance was the solitary form and piteous face of the 
truant quadruped. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 321 

All this I dreamed and move; — dreamed that we sailed 
on and on, until I came to a place called Territet-Chillon. It 
was a lovely laketown, that reminded me of similar ones I 
had seen on the stage, with its fresh paint and varnish, and 
granite hotels with shining floors, glowing frescoes and 
Parian marbles. Tliere were neat green boats, with green 
paddles, soft cushions, little flags flying to the fore, gayly- 
dressed water-men, and sometimes young and handsome 
women, pulling the little cockle-shells through the purple 
waters. Surely it could not be all real, I thought ; yet nature 
is as finished as art. Man comes to train the vine, to ter- 
race the hills, to persuade the water down to the land, and 
to set in uniform the olive ; but it is the Almighty that pre- 
sides in awful dignity on these batllemented mountains, 
wrapping their crests in the haze of the storm, lighting 
them with the quivering fire of electricity, and agitating 
them down to their deep foundations with the thunders of 
His wrath. 

T went ashore and commenced the ascent of an acclivity, 
while the boat quitted the pier and continued its course. 
I paused upon the path, for I felt weary, and looked out 
upon the blue waters. Boats were moored to the shore, 
and feluccas with gay-striped sails and canvas cabins were 
carrying fishermen's and peasants' stores over the lake. A 
large white hotel elevated upon a ridge of rock faced the 
water, and awnings and matting shades drooped over bal- 
conies bordered by branching plants at every story. A 
neat little summer-house hung on to the last spur of land, 
and flowers bloomed in profusion. I saw no town, no 
shops; only a street levelled along the water where the hotel 
and several Swiss chalets stood, and a little shanty post- 
office where pens, ink, and paper, pins and thread, were 
sold. Beyond this there were no visible means of human 
existence. The well-wooded mountains rose abruptly in 
rear of the contracted pathway, but slightly higher and 
farther back workmen were cutting away foliage and re- 
ducing sharp granite edges to a foundation level. 

This retreat seemed some angel's nest, closed off from 
the rude world by God's great walls, and I thought, in my 
dream, what a beatitude to live in such a golden seclusion, 
where no word of strife nor worldly sufi'ering might obtrude 
to spoil supreme content and unclouded peace! But look- 
ing beyond 1 saw a strange, dismal pile of building upon 
an isolated rock in the lake. It had high towers and strong 
walls ; feudal buttresses started out from the angles and 



322 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

hung from the corners of the eaves; little, ding}', deep-set 
windows I saw too, here and there in the old stony fortress. 
It inspired me with sorrow, and I turned from it with all 
my human sympathies welling in my soul. Even this lovely 
legion then was not free from sorrow and shame ! I went 
into the hotel, and the}^ told me there it was a prison ; then 
my heart sank and the world seemed darker, and nature, 
that had only a moment before been throbbing with the 
rapture of beauty, was stripped of her glorious plumes. I 
inquired who languished in the living tomb, but there 
seemed none to tell the story; then I wondered how long 
I might remain at this halcj-on spot, for even in my dream 
I had a vague dread of some unseen and uncontrollable 
power interrui)ting my happiness. 

The hotel had spacious apartments, but the larder must 
have been scant}", for I remember a gnawing hunger tearing 
at me that seemed insatiable, not because I was such a 
prodigious gastronome, but because there was absolutely 
nothing to eat. Night lowered her sable pall, and still 
suffering from an unappeased desire I seemed to sleep ; then 
a horrible phantom carried me to a banquet-hall where 
tables, burdened with delicacies maddened me with tlieir 
inviting aroma, and increased my ravenous appetite. 
Sometimes great bowls of terrapin, })yramid8 of croquettes, 
ravishing salads, pate-de-fois-gras, caviare, or barbecued 
robins tempted me, and as I was about to propitiate m}*- 
persistent enemy by one of these, they magically disnp- 
jiearcd; then luscious fruit, for which I reached, receded 
from my grasp, and as I followed the deceiver it ever kept 
near enough to beguile me and far enough to escape ; last 
of all I saw a bottle of champagne, frc^m which the cork 
seemed to be rising spontaneously; ''Here," said I, " is 
the unknown power to alleviate my suffering," and purs- 
ing my lips for the life-giving draught, I heard the wine 
flowing to the ground, and I thought I awakened with 
frenzy at my heart. 

The enervation of hunger and letiiargy was ui)on me, 
3et I had an imaginary recollection of a grim tower they 
called prison. Jt was day again, but veils of mist hung 
over Jura's heights, and the water was black and foreboding. 
I looked out upon all this from my window, then went down 
to follow the rugged Alpine path to the fortress. It was 
a short walk, and I only passed some wanderers, like my- 
self, and a few mountain peasants. I stood and gazed upon 
the cruel stronghold — with windows opening only upon the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 323 

great waste of waters, where even the birds cliirped notes 
of sorrow, and the waves heaved melancholy sighs for the 
langMiishing victims — before crossing the crude bridge, the 
solitary link between the lake-bound rock and the mainland. 
^J'here were other strangers there paying their francs to the 
castellan, and buying neat little paintings of the historied 
precincts from the artist at the door. 

I was ushered through a dirty courtyard, where rats and 
mice and miscellaneous vermin might gambol ad libitum. 
Dungeons, 1 saw, where human slaves had perished and 
human wolves had left their ineffaceable footprints; halls 
where princes of Savoy had lodged, still hung with armor 
of departed chieftains ; arsenals of artillery; halls of jus- 
tice and columned and arched dining-chambers. At last I 
came to the subterranean halls that are excavated from the 
rock, far down under the walls of the stronghold, and yet 
above the surface of the stream ; long narrow windows 
were cut through the granite that reflected the light upon, 
the water back upon the roof, making an ethereal glamour 
through the dungeons; little dark holes intersticed the 
several apartments where, ihey whispered, prisoners had 
been executed. In the last of these dismal chambers I 
saw the form of a man perched upon a foothold in the 
rock}' wall and peering through the grated loophole. He 
turned, when I entered, and coming forward in a raj' steri- 
ons manner took my hand and said, "Do not fear. 1 am 
onl}' a prisoner now, by self-imposed fetters. I have grown 
to love bondage." I was not frightened, in my dream, at 
being so familiarly greeted by a detenu^ but 1 looked up 
and saw a man gray, stooped and weary, but not witii ao-e, 
and retaining all the remains of strong physical beauty. 
He spoke to me in a nebulous tone in consonance with our 
surroundings, and said, " Come!" I followed him and he 
conducted me to a small dark room on the ground floor. 
It contained two other occupants — convict and escort ; a 
trap of planks fixed to the floor by iron hinges was lifted, 
and my new cicerone gave me the cue to look, but not to ven- 
ture near the gap ; I saw a few steps like the beginnino- of 
a contracted oblique stairway, all else was lost in intense 
obscurity. I said nothing, but stepped back overawed, 
imagining these steps to lead to a deepseated dungeon ; 
then the condemned walked forward, and as he took his first 
descending step a supernatural hush seemed to pervade the 
hall. We all stood breathless, and, in my dream, I felt as 
if a heavy weight was pressing upon my breast; another 



324 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

lie took, then all was still as death ; a plunge, a splash of 
waves, and I knew a burdened soul was beinj carried out 
to its submarine grave through the abyss. As my guide 
led nie away he only said '' Ninety feet deep ;" but I under- 
stood. He conducted me back to the hall of seven pillars; 
he pointed to the fifth, with its cankering, clanging ring 
snd chain, saying, " Here my ancestor, the brave knight- 
errant Bonivard, languished ;" then to the third, where I 
saw the name Byron, and my eye caught still other names 
— Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo — that I had a m3'stic re- 
membrance were filling the earth with glorj'. He told me 
his pedigree and the sufferings of his ancestors for national 
liberty, and the triumphs of the i)rior of Saint Victor more 
than three centuries ago for the abatement of papal tyranny 
and ecclesiastical degradation, and added, " There should 
be no slaves of religion or government." No! 1 shook my 
head dismally ; thinking we were all vassals to some mys- 
terious authorit}'. 

I do not know how many hours elapsed, but we walked 
back through the vistas of time and seemed to see all the 
episodes and characters that filled these historical halls 
with fame. 

He said, "Before you leave me I must tell 3 ou that I am 
he of whom the poet speaks : — 

" ' My hair is gray, but not with years, 
Nor grew it wiiite ' " 

I raised mj' hand with an expostulatory motion. " Oh, 
mercy!" I cried; ''sj)are me, allow me to go in peace; 
that inevitable fame and face and form have been pursuing 
and preceding me for days." "But," he insisted, "3'ou 
must hear, for it is the music of his melod3'^ and the halo 
of his genius that have glorified this charnelhouse; the 
romance of poetry has supplanted sober histor3\ Until he 
poured the light of his intellect upon this prison, Lake 
Leman was comparatively unknown; his poem has given 
it a priceless value, and like the fabled music of the nymphs 
attracts thousands of strangers to the island. Now," 
said he, "it occurs to me that Byron's posterity should 
have a legal claim to the royalty, just as playwrights or 
patentees have their poundage. Of our thousands of visi- 
tors they all leave a substantial token ; now if this is not 
to prove a portion of the income of his descendants it 
should at least he devoted to a monument to his memory. 
But what voice have 1?" he continued; " I, who am only a 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 325 

poor convict, who have learned to love my cavern home, 
with the mice and spiders and toads, the smell of damp- 
ness, and the graves of my fathers for my bed; they," with 
a gesture of his head toward the outer door, "will not listen 
to me, and protest as you may against his haunting influ- 
ence, his inspiration flamed all over Switzerland, as it 
flamed over Belgium and Italy, and wherever it touclied it 
seemed to transmute every thing into gold, not only casting 
a rosy haze over each spot, but adding to its intrinsic 
value. When he showered these streams of radiance upon 
my prison home he little thought he was contributing profit 
to hotels, steamboats, railways, castellans, and conferring 
fame upon me. Deemest thou me ungrateful now? Oh, 
magic mental power! how thou outlivest the bravery of 
the soldier, and even the sacrifice of the martyr," and as 
he knelt at the shrine of his immortalizing bard, the spaces 
grew darker, and the troubadour's image suspended in 
vacancy shone with the glory of the mounted sun that 
blinded my vision, filling the dungeon with a golden in- 
cense that drowned my senses, and thus I drifted into 
peaceful oblivion, until waking I found myself in the 
Hotel Gibbon at Lausanne. 



LETTER LXIII. 

'* The clouds are on the Oberland, 

The Jungfrau snows look faint and far ; 
But bright are those green fields at hand, 
And through those fields comes down the Aar." 

Arnold. 

Berne, July, 1878. 

I ROSE on the Fourth to find m3^self mentally celebrating 
the anniversarj^ of American independence in the quiet 
little Protestant Swiss town of Lausanne. Although a 
cultivated place,* with four or five newspapers, a great 
library, a long . history, and the chief centre of one of the 
provinces of Switzerland, no more account was taken of 
our national holiday than if the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence had never been proclaimed or America never discov- 
ered. 

28 



326 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

T sat writing in the garden where the great English his- 
torian, Gibbon, wrote the concluding portion of his pon- 
derous book. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire^ 
ninety-one years ago. The Hotel Gibbon deserves a glori- 
ous name, for it is a gem of its kind, and worthy of eulo- 
gium as well for its unexceptional cuisine as for its moderate 
prices. 

The English were present in full force at the fine house 
dedicated to tlieir learned countryman. A cold, reticent, 
exclusive race are the}', and while Mrs. John Bull and her 
gentle heifers are as easily distinguished for their charac- 
teristics as Mrs. Brother Jonathan, John Bull is gener- 
ally more loquacious and companionable than his sister. 
Just here I am reminded that an American woman gener- 
ally prefers the sterner sex — an aspersion to which 1 disdain 
a reply. 

Lausanne is a peaceful, picturesque town, built upon 
crags and mountain-sides. Wherever a street or villa might 
be hung, whetlier upon turret, spur, or pass, we find one. 
Every road is a hilly path, and every house on an inclined 
plane. The sloi)es are rigid and oftentimes circuitous. And 
while my sisters were broiling at home, I was rolled in a 
heavy shawl, for the air was colder than an American Octo- 
ber, it is a curious town, with pretty shops of wood-carv- 
ings, and great hills to climb, and a soothing influence, 
where one might rest content and forget the world. 

Above the city the paths twine about the Alps, over 
which the peasants trudge in their coarse costumes, bearing 
their burdens of wood and water upon their backs. Few 
strong men I saw, mostly women; some shrivelled and bent 
by the weight of years; others young, but rapidly passing 
from the springtime of life into the autumn by theii double 
trials. They carry the necessaries of existence up the rug- 
ged ascents to their little Alpine huts, tucked nnder the 
oranite edges. There are no individual hydrants and 
wood-piles in each of these humble homes, as we have 
across the water. Here the water must be drawn at the 
public street-fountains, and carried in great wooden pails 
strapped upon the back, and the kindling must be gathered 
in mountain forests from the fallen brushwood. 

This part of Switzerland is cultivated in the highest 
degree. Every rood is utilized. The regions along the 
lakes are a succession of villas and stone towns, the roads 
being super-solid, thrift and cleanliness are joined to luxury 
and taste. This little republic, sandwiched between great 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 32t 

kingdoms, flourislios upon travellers. The long and rigor- 
ous winters exhaust the garnered gains from the harvest of 
summer tourists, so each year finds the hotel and shop- 
keepers feeding upon the unsuspecting strangers like cor- 
morants. The iron-roads are used little by the natives, 
who are mostly industrious and frugal. Ingenious and 
simple, the}' are happ}'- among " their future oils and vines,'' 
in the skill of their exquisite wood-sculptures, and pretty 
little paintings of mountains and lakes. I verily believe 
every one in Switzerland is master of the brush and chisel; 
and there they sit upon lake-shore or Alpine ledge, trans- 
muting God's masterpieces into gold. 

Nature has been prolific of beauty to Switzerland. To 
the United States it has vouchsafed the wealth of the world. 
Our country is a succession of climates and zones. With- 
out passing beyond our own territory we may, with small 
expense, live in perpetual spring and summer. This new 
world, with all its gifts, seems a special dispensation of 
Providence, as the final refuge and salvation of mankind. 
Here, with comparatively few of these advantages, the long 
winters and short summers, with the marvellous glaciers, 
snow mountains onlj'- slightly elevated above fields green 
with verdure, Alps on Alps, the absence of coal and iron, 
make the people dependent upon their own industries or 
the bounty of strangers. The whole face of the country is 
w^rinkled, indented, and cut up into rocky mountains of 
vast height; yet, by the law of compensation, the cavities 
are translucent lakes, while their narrow shores are ex- 
quisitely adorned by public resorts or elegant private resi- 
dences. 

Near Lausanne I saw the first genuine Swisser barns, a 
combination of dwelling-house, kitchen, stable, and granary, 
all under one roof, and not an unpleasant accumulation of 
comforts, if the manure-heap was not invariably before the 
dining-room window. 

In the ride between Lausanne and Berne the Swisser 
barns l)egan to multiply. French costumes gave wa}' to 
the short petticoats of broad, awkward women and large- 
footed men in brogans. Italian art recedes before German 
industry. Catholic crosses disappear from the roadside. 
Calvin and Luther push out the Pope and cardinals. The 
shaven fields, comfortable homes, and broad, genuine faces 
have a Lancaster or Berks Connt\^ air. The nause.ating 
garlic of the Italian conductors is lost in the equally strong 
odor of Limberger cheese and beer. The beggars of Italy 



328 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

are replaced b}' toiling women in the fields and on the high- 
waj^s. 

The railway-carriages of Switzerland are entered from a 
platform front and rear, like our own ; not in parallel seats, 
however, but divided into small sections, with connecting 
doors and passages through the centre (the effect of this 
arrangement is to make less space, and less comfort), and 
every alternate section is devoted to smoking. 

The cold climate of Lausanne has disappeared under a 
summer sun in Berne, though there ia none of the intense 
heat of an American July. 

The first picture I met was a bevy of Swiss peasants at 
the depot, in their picturesque costumes of coarse black 
petticoat, plaited full at the waist and falling just above 
the ankles; black velvet corsage, high in the back, cut in a 
low square on the bosom, exposing a chemisette of crude 
cotton cloth. Most of these mountain-bred women are 
sliort, sturdy, and solid as pine knots. They are as utterly 
graceless as if the}^ were sexless, and possess all the hardi- 
hood of animals of burden. 

Berne itself, the political capital of the Republic of 
Switzerland, is not half so handsome and bright a city as 
Reading, yet somewhat resembles it by the lofty mountain 
in the rear. Here there is neither grace in the men, beauty 
in the women, elegance in the streets, nor perfume in the 
air. The women saw and split wood, clean highways, pull 
heavy wagons up steep hills, haul their own moving, and of 
course bear all the ills entailed by nature upon the sex just 
as if they were the petted darlings of royalty. But the 
frame in which this ugly old town is placed is inconceivably 
lovely; the fields are alternately green and golden; the 
mountainous Alps are from seven to ten thousand feet in 
height, covered with snow or shining with vines; while the 
rivers, bright as jewel-beds, flow round the city, endless 
streams of health. 

My first impressions of Berne were that it was a clean, 
calm, Dutch town, a striking contrast to France or Ital^' ; 
after I had seen its public places and streets, tiiat it was a 
very dull, very dirty, and very Dutch town, with a nomen- 
clature in which Bigler, Baer, Baur, Ritter, Karnhaus and 
Zugler frequently appear. True there is an amplitude of 
squalor in Italy, but all is hallowed by their superlative 
art. 

I was about to say the}' had no art or music in this 
ancient burgh. Yes, they have the Tj^'olese airs, and their 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 329 

photographs, engravings, and paintings are pre-eminently 
Dutch, with a jirominent attempt at something more dilet- 
tante, just as their language is a patois. There is a pro- 
nounced indisposition of the natives to speak the mother 
tongue; they aspire to French, which being adulterated 
makes a perfectly incomprehensible jargon, understood 
only by the population of the Canton. Should they feel dis- 
honor at the language of Luther, Schiller, Goethe, Liebig, 
and the great religious, political, and poetical writers of 
the past? 

I walked to the Cathedral terrace, a public resort beauti- 
fully situated overlooking the winding river Aar. There 
were shady walks, bronze statues, and jutting pavilions at 
the corners overhanging the dismal town below; but it was 
crowded with old men smoking bad pipes, and coase sauer- 
kraut and pork women drinking beer, How different is all 
this from the ga3^ throngs along the boulevards of Paris, 
or the voluptuous Roman maidens in their tawdry but daz- 
zWiKjr costumes clusterin;^ on the steps that lead from the 
Piazza di Spagna at the hour of sunset. p]ven the ruined 
Cathedral is bare and desolate after the rich fulness of 
Catholic temples. 

There are a number of so-called attractions in Berne 
which beguile the stranger into a visit. They are all frauds 
of the most flagrant odor, from the grotesque Kinderfresser, 
or child-eater, to the bear-pits. This awkward cormorant, 
in his Oriental costume, is perched upon the lofty height 
of a street fountain, evidently enjoying his evening meal 
of youthful progeny that peep out from his pockets in the 
most appetizing way. Ask a Bernese the attractions of his 
town, and he will enumerate them, alvvaj^s beginning with 
the Kinderfresser as the cynosure, and ending with the clock 
tower, which is a superlative fraud. The former has only 
the merit of being an oddity, and with its accompan3'ing 
bears, which are the heraldic emblem of the city, refers to 
an old tradition. 

The savage tribes were proverbial for worshipping ani- 
mals. The Persians adore the sun; in Pagan eras the 
white bull was s'acred ; in scriptural epochs the lamb, sheep, 
and rams were holy sacrifices. In India the white elephant, 
in Constantinople the dog, in Venice the picongs and 
winged lions, and in many climates the serpents have 
homage done them. In Berne the bear is the ubiquitous 
symbol. If I desired to make a pun, and a very bad one, 
I would say, for a decent town it is the bearest one 1 ever 

28* 



330 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

saw. The awkward animal is everywhere. Four living 
bears are kept at the municipal expense in a pit in t!ie 
very heart of the cit}^, and very offensivelj* kept in addi- 
tion ; to add disgust to the repel lant den dirty boys and 
bloated men overhang the iron railing tossing food to the 
rank animals. Two granite bears, badly executed, keep 
guard over the Abertiiun — main gate to the city. Others 
support the shield of the Cornhall ; a whole troop of bears 
go through a series of genuflexions at the clock tower. 
There are bear photographs innumerable, bears in wood as 
ornaments, bears in gold and silver as charms or trinkets, 
bears dancing, bears fighting, bears cooing, bears at bil- 
liards, baby bears, mother bears, and father bears, in a 
word, a community of bears, and for a quiet people a bare- 
faced community. Indeed the ancient Egyptians had not 
a greater reverence for Ibis than these people have for their 
tutelary emblem. 

The clock tower is another hideous curiosity, if I may 
honor the structure by such an epithet. It was originally 
erected as a watch-tower in 1191, and renovated in 1770. 
It is now poorly preserved, as if to perpetuate the habits 
of the old Bernese. The value of vigilance seems to be 
the apothegm entailed by its curious mechanism. Three 
minutes before every hour a wooden cock claps its wings 
and crows; a minute later the bears march around in a 
circle; a Dutch clown strikes the hour on a bell as the 
hands of the clock point to the hour; an old man counts 
the time by turning a glass and raising a sceptre with each 
stroke; and a bear on his right accompanies him by incli- 
nations of its head. This silly spectacle attracts a number 
of visitors hourly, and when I saw it, to add to my dis- 
comfort, the entire square was filled by a stifling and name- 
less odor, that I presume arose from the gutter that flowed 
through the middle of the street. 

Yet Berne may claim a genuine sentiment, as a recent 
incident which I gathered from a resident here proves. The 
well-known Jubilee Singers, who have been making a tour 
of Europe for some months in the interest of the Fisk 
University at Nashville, Tenn., seven females and four 
males, gave their first concert at Berne on the evening of 
the 15th of last May, in the French church. A colored 
person in Switzerland is as rare as a Turk in America, 
and so, apart from their talent as musicians, was the ex- 
citement created by their bronze faces. True, rumors of 
their proficiency had preceded them ; they had electrified 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 331 

the savants^ scientists, and artists of Berlin, Leipsic, Mag- 
deburg, Lubeck, Hamburg, Cologne, Fi-ankfort-on-tbe-Main, 
and some of the most distinguished professors of schools 
and colleges yielded to the influence of their sweet, yet 
weird and sacred melodies. In London, eminent persons, 
. — the Duchess of Sutherland, Mr. Gladstone, the Duke of 
Devonshire, while the Duke of Argyle paid tribute to their 
genius by inviting them to his castle. In Holland they 
roused a perfect enthusiasm. Queen Victoria, the Crown 
Prince and Princess of Germany, and Emperor of Austria 
attended their concerts and testified to their extraordinary 
abilities. 

At the close of their first exhibition in Berne, Mr. Yan 
Bui'en, President of the city, invited them to return for a 
Sf'cond concert, and placed the Cathedral at their disposal. 
To enaiile those residing at a distance to attend, the con- 
cert was fixed for the afternoon, and in the evening they 
dined with their patron at the " Enge," a celeltrated res- 
taurant in the suburbs, to meet such persons as had evinced 
intense interest in their history. This concert in the Catli- 
edral was a greater success than the former, when they 
were welcomed to Switzerland by Mr. Van Buren, who 
sp(>ke of the great sympathy their wonderful genius and 
their deliverance from slavery had excited among his 
l)e<)ple. The response was made b}?- Mr. F. J. Loud in, one 
of the minstrels, with touching eloquence. At the "Enge," 
the musical Societies of Berne came to honor the Jubilee 
Singers with Moody and Sankey melodies, and, fatigued 
as tiiey were, they replied to the eulogistic serenade in 
their famous song of "The Bells." 

An impressive incident shows how these colored artists 
arouse all nations with their harmonies and their sufferings. 
An English lady, Madame de Watteville, ?i^e O'Connor, was 
so much moved by the thrilling fervor of their music that she 
invited them to her elegant villa near Thoune to pass a 
week with her. 

Berne preserves more thoroughlj^ts old eccentricities than 
any other Swiss city. It is true to its ancient liquor and 
legends — beer and bears, though there is a wine-cellar with 
hogsheads containing sixty-two thousand quarts of wine. 
There are a few really imposing public buildings, but the 
simplicity of repul)licanism is severely maintained in the 
city of the Swiss Congress. Yet even here, in the very 
heart of republicanism, we find a rich and poor aristocracy. 
The families with a long pedigree are as exclusive as tiiey 
were a thousand years ago. 



332 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

While in Rome I heard curious stories of the poverty 
and pride of titled families. Man}' of them reside in the 
cellars of their own palaces and live upon the rentals ; while 
frequently the upper floors of the old castles are occupied 
by wealthy Americans and English, and the Italian dukes 
and counts are content to iiide their own destitution by 
sharing the same floor with the pigs and poultry. But it 
was even more interesting to me, who had not looked for 
blue blood amongst the German Swiss, to find that there 
was so much of the miserable pride of ancestry heie. 

There is some excuse, however, for this foolifsh arrogance 
in Europe, and we tolerate it when we remember that these 
narrow souls were not ()n\y born to, but have inherited the 
V)elief of their especial superiority ; still there is no apology 
for Americans who are either ashamed of their ancestors or 
overly fond of boasting of them. 

Such a course is ever a confession of personal inferiority. 
He who has won his own title to nobilily never points to 
his pedigree, whether his grandfather be a saint, a sover- 
eign or a scav^enger. His individual patent of royalty is 
too apparent to need the advertising medium of his pro- 
genitor's dust. He never resurrects his grandfathei''s ghost 
to heave at you twenty times in an hour as the family crest 
of herakhy. 

On an elevation beyond the botanical gardens stands a 
beautiful residence, the home of the American Minister, 
Nicholas Fish, son of the late Secretary of State. The 
highly-cultivated oflficial and his family reflect grace and 
credit upon our country, and form the contrasting and re- 
deeming link in the chain of ministers and consuls who 
force themselves into positions for which they are neither 
qualified by nature or education by a too elaborate perso- 
nal canvass, or as the reward for partisan zeal. This in- 
trigue on the part of the politicians, and cowardice on the 
part of the appointing power at Washington, has meiited 
for our country and some American ambassadors at foreign 
courts many mortifying slurs. 

My task is done, my notes of Berne are taken, and now 
at the close of the sweet Sabl)ath J look from ni^^ windovv 
upon a broad expanse of glorious landscape where nature 
reigns supreme. God has done so much to embellish this 
exquisite picture that art seems to have been awed into 
silence by the stroke of the master-hand. The Aar is flow- 
ing swiftly in its course this quiet Sunday afternoon, dash- 
ing against the stone piers of a little bridge, while farther 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 333 

on it foams and plunges over a rock into a milk}^ cataract, 
where the color of the water changes from a pale blue to 
emerald. The white roads wind through the luxuriant 
fields of grass and golden grain. The little white farm- 
houses across the stream, with great crimson roofs, are 
closed and silent. Dutch peasants are walking in the cool 
shad}^ lanes, and little boats are moored to the river's brink 
under the tall poplars that stand motionless in the summer 
twilight. The picture is vitalized by a tiny black dog 
standing upon the delta of sandy soil. 

How rich and picturesque the grand plateau of land op- 
posite, touched by the afterglow — the peculiar phenomenon 
of the Bernese Oberland. Phoibus has gone to rest behind 
the Alps, and pale Cynthia swings her silver crescent over- 
head, and as the eternal dome gradually changes her robes 
of vivid orange, intense blue, and dazzling crimson for the 
sombre hues of gray and slate, I hear the Tyrolese songs 
of cottagers coming in nebulous strains through the valley, 
the river tide as it rolls and dashes like the mighty waves 
of ocean, the screeching of the hawks as they fly round and 
round in circles on the mountain peaks, and tlie report of 
the sportsman's gun in the distance, all blent into one 
heavenly harmony. A circlet of gold binds the western 
zone, and a hazy blue-and-white flecked veil hangs over- 
head as I sit in the mystic afterglow of the Bernese Alps. 



LETTER LX I Y. 

" There is a light in darkness which the soul 
Can seldom know, until the sense have crept 
From height to height across the shadowless peaks 
Which sentinel thy valley ; there are deeps 
In thy green hollows, wliere still thought could lie 
Through summer noons unending, glad with dreams." 

Annie Fields. 

Interlaken, July, 1878. 

When T was a wee little girl my school-teacher told 
me to write a composition on Interlaken. I really do not 
recollect whether I iiad ever heard of the superb to}^ Swiss 
town, with its crystal lakes and ice mountains, until that 
minute; however, from the name I had a mystic idea that 



334 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

it was someTvhere in the East, but this did not liinl wlint I 
should say of it, as I had not the most ambiguous concej)- 
tion of its geographical situation or its physical aspt^cts. 
Points were given upon which the class were to elaborate. 
Now the points of a composition for a class of 3^oung 
children are generally the complete article with the addi- 
tion of several stilted adjectives interjected here and there 
to heighten the glow of the scenes. I began to elaborate^ 
and described a storm on the lake, — I was told there was a 
lake, — spoke of tinj' skiffs, fantastically dressed peasants, 
and thundering heights. This composition made an in- 
effacealtle impress on my mind, for the paradoxical reason 
that I had not the vaguest knowledge of what I was writing. 
I finished the production and handed it in to our smnll 
board of education for inspection, without being sure of 
tlie national position of the village in question. Now that 
I have seen Interlaken, I long for those early sheets that f 
might insert tiiem just here as a much truer approacli to 
nature than any picture I am now able to draw. The 
realization of this fact saddens me as I feel that the sense 
of genuine inspiration — the inspiration that emanates from 
the muse, not from knowledge — lies buried under the ashes 
of years. 

The district between Berne and Interlaken is like a leaf 
taken from a story-book. Into a sweet valley of not more 
than twenty-five miles is crowded a combination of beauties. 
The ride from Thun is across a level meadow-garden, be- 
tween two chains of mighty Alpine hills, interspersed with 
vast Swisser barns, and animated by throngs of men and 
women laboring in the fields, with the overshadowing pre- 
sence of the Bernese Oberland, that fragment of Switzer- 
land famous for weird and romantic scenery, dangerous 
passes, shining lakes, and rivers full of melted snow, that 
pours and plunges in torrents from the hills. 

All this section is controlled by the Protestants, and 
everywhere the presence of Protestant influence is percepti- 
ble. There are about 1,000,000 Catholics in Swiizerhind, 
and 1,500,000 Protestants, but in the Cantons of Berne and 
Zurich the Papists number five to one. 

Thun is a dull, uncleanly town, with large and costly 
hotels. The main street is built in arcades, where the 
fronts of the houses projecting about ten feet above the 
ground form magazines. On the roof of these is the pave- 
ment for foot-passengers. There are many busy shops, and 
residences looking as archaic as the hills by which they are 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 335 

inclosecl. But in the midst of all this antiquity are almost 
countless fresh and gorgeous hotels: Hotels whose deco- 
rations are something altogether foreign from our Ameri- 
can establishments in the mere matter of frescoes, gilding, 
carving, stucco, statuary, mosaic and parqueterie floors, 
arbors, walks, fountains, cascades ; in a word, of infinite 
variety and skill. The construction and improvement of 
these hotels prove two facts: the boundless resources of tiie 
capitalists of Europe, and the enormous profits gathered 
at European summer resorts. They abound in every re- 
gion. They are not confined to the great cities, but in 
every little French, Italian, German, Swiss, and Dutch 
town, on every romantic plateau, or mountain summit, or 
lake border, and in every nook and corner that history or 
poetry has immortalized, tiiere are these resplendent tempta- 
tions to the purses of the wealthy stranger. 

Every new hotel is a fresh marvel to me, and a new one 
rises every year in every availal)le spot; but there is no 
surprise more startling than the apparent scarcity of guests 
even in the most successful season. These hotels are never 
crowded, and just now the superior magnet of the Pai-is 
Exposition is drawing away their patrons and exhausting 
their exchequers. I have wondered that a journalist does 
not undei"tnke to record the statistics of the expense, in- 
come, and ownership of this continental hotel system. 

We dined at the Bellevue, just beyond the city boundary, 
perched on an edge of land overhanging the valley of the 
Aar. The food was good, plain and inexpensive, but when 
we attempted to contract for a carriage to drive us to some 
of the castles and villas on the hike while we tarrieci for the 
boat to Interlaken, we discovered that the schedule of prices 
exceeded those in Philadelphia or !New York; so this 
j)leasure was abandoned — reluctantly — as we had no aspi- 
rations to become the benefactors of the Thun livery 
stables. 

About one mile from the city proper, at the head of the 
lake, we took the boat for Interlaken. All along the shore 
there were enchanting glimpses of Swiss nature and modern 
art. It was neat and trim, clean and beautiful, yet different 
from the Lake of Como with its glamour of tradition and 
romance. The superb scene iiad a peculiar fascination of 
grim majestic heights blended with cosy rest and youthful 
jollity. The banks were studded with picturesque villas 
and glowing gardens, but everywhere there were chateaux 
and hotels and home attractions for travellers ; everywhere 



336 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

brilliant parterres, emerald terraces, and blooming slopes, 
little boats dancing on the translucent waves, the jocund 
voices of tourists, with the ringing laugii of children and 
young girls mingling like silver bells in the chorus. 

As our boat advanced over the path it ploughed for itself 
in the serene waters, the colossal liills seemed to close over- 
head in an arch of granite ; they bowed their majestic 
pinnacles before us and barred our way. Just at the mo- 
ment when all egress was apparently cut off the granite 
cliffs opened, and we glided through as providentially as 
the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea when the waters 
heaved into two great walls on either side of them ; and, 
indeed, our path between the frowning rocks seemed as 
miraculous. All was so wild, inscrutable, mysterious, and 
silent, that toil seemed to have died out of the world ; yet 
among these rocks and ravines labor's hands are sore, and 
woman drudges like a slave while she discharges the double 
duties of wife and mother. 

See yonder she is piling the sheaves of wheat upon the 
wagon, sweeping the sc3'the through the bending grain, 
pulling heav}^ loads upon the mountain- side ; and farther 
on are four sturdy, muscular peasant women straining at 
tlie oars of a boat burdened with ha}^ and pushing it into 
the neighboring shore ; and over on the roadside is a girl, 
not more than sixteen, and her aged mother splitting granite 
with a pick for a turnpike. 

Where are the fathers, the brothers, the husbands, or the 
lovers? Such creatures must exist in this region, else how 
the wives and the daughters? And these slaves are the 
creatures to whom men refuse suffrage, because such an act 
would entail upon them an unsexing servitude, and subject 
them to degrading positions or hazardous exposure; these 
are they against whom men bar their university doors, be- 
cause the}'^ are too fragile to bear the travail of arduous 
study, or too rose-like and beautiful to come in constant 
contact with a promiscuous crowd of men, or too delicate 
and fair and cliaste to listen to learned discussions on 
pathology and anatomy. These are the creatures upon 
whom even the more favored of their own sex say it would V 
be a demoralizing and degenerating influence to allow them 
to take part in the science of government and the higher i 
professions with their brothers! Let us be logical if we i,-* 
cannot be just. At least in these old countries, if women 
must work, and men must fight, let the burdens of life be 
equalized. Do not say that those we call in America the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 33t 

feel)lest should here be made to do the heaviest of all human 
toils. 

After leaving the boat, a small line of railway — a ten 
minutes' ride — took me to the little show town presided 
over by that callous young lady, arrayed in her glistening, 
icy garments, Jungfrau. I rode up a long street that 
seemed to extend itself far bej'ond my vision, until it was 
lost in the water or cut off' by the rocks. This street was 
bordered by double rows of walnut trees, and on either 
hand were shops of wooden sculptures and paintings of 
Alpine scenery ; as I proceeded handsome hotels with os- 
tentatious fagades and gaudy flower-gardens took the place 
of the magazines on one side, and on the other lovely 
stretches of emerald turf shone in pronounced contrast with 
the gray rocks and frozen mountains. These hotels seemed 
to have been erected overnight, so modern in architecture 
and fresh in paint were they. On and on we rode until [ 
marvelled how many of these sinking funds the town 
owned. I had settled upon my own hostel, which I found 
was rather far up-town, having, however, two advantages. — 
that of being directly opposite the chaste and silent bride, 
where I might gaze upon her shining robes and feel her 
frozen smile in return ; then, the second benefit was, to 
reach the business centre 1 was obliged to pass an infinite 
variety of rich and picturesque stores. Half way down 
the long street I turned off to my right and found the 
Cursaal, where the whey from the mountain goats' milk 
is sold to complaining invalids. It is a beautiful open 
garden, situated half on the ground level, and tilted slightly 
on the mountain ascent, where summer-houses and flower 
beds framed in odd devices, a restaurant, and a platform 
for the band are the interesting features. Farther up to- 
ward the Lake of Brienz, on the opposite bank of the Aar, 
I could see the peasants of Unterseen treading the steep 
paths. It was a sweet picture, and as I stood enraptured 
the one question pushed itself into prominence: Is the life 
1 see here as fascinating in practice as it is in ideal ? 

Interlaken is a purely show place, — neat and clean as a 
young woman dressed for a fair ; but how the shopkeepers 
and landlords subsist is a marvel. Said I to the waiter at 
table this morning, " You have many hotels here ; can you 
tell me how many ?" " Oh, yes," he replied in very bad 
English, "we have quite five hundred." "Whatl" I. ex- 
claimed in startled amazement ; then I added calmly, " Oh, 
™y good man, you are mistaken." But he assured me it 
29 



338 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

was true, so my next question was ; "Have you any idea of 
your population ?" For a few moments tie had a far-away 
expression, and then replied " Five hundred." Then said 
I, " You have as many great hotels as you have people ;" 
and he replied with supreme complaisance, " Yes, just as 
many." 1 did not solicit further knowledge from this young 
person ; but as he walked away I thought what a clever 
hyperbole the poor fellow had unconsciously achieved. 

The Victoria is the best filled, has a better cuisine^ and 
has equally moderate rates with the others, but I was 
frightened away from it by the expensive flower-pots, and 
concluded not to help the landlonl defray the florist's bill 
from my bank account. But there is nothing cheap at In- 
teilaken. The place is too fine, and every stranger is fair 
game to pluck. Cab hire is just doubled here, and when I 
attempted to invest in photographs I was astounded at the 
tariff. But how exhilarating the air, how sweet the flowers, 
how green the grass, how like mighty fortifications the 
mountains, and how like a white-robed Goddess of Peace, 
the Jungfrau looks down from her snowy throne upon the 
tranquil vale ! 

And why has this exquisite town to complain of a dearth 
of patronage ? Simply because people are getting tired of 
Inqiosition, and I predict a speedy downfall for those extor- 
tionate proprietors in the near future. 

My stay at Interlaken was hallowed by a sweet experi- 
ence with the old lady in the English library. 1 do not 
know what in my face or manner struck the confidential 
and pathetic cord of her organization ; however, she told me 
her stor3', which was neither an ordinary nor unromantic 
one. Said she : " My grandfather established a newspaper 
in Thun eighty years ago, which is still printed by my 
family. We have several editions, a daily and three week- 
lies issued from the same office, and you know," she added, 
" Thun is a small town fenced in by a rocky and thinly 
populated neighborhood, but ray family have been prosper- 
ous printers, and proud am I to say dev^oted heart and soul 
to liberalism. My life," she said, '^ has been an easy, happy 
one on the whole, though like all others I have had my 
cross to bear. M^^ little grandson, who was destined to 
become a printer and so honor and prolong the family name 
was suddenly called away in the spring. Now I feel as if I 
had nothing more to hold me to earth." The old lady's 
library is a rendezvous for intelligent travellers, and she 
herself a great and deserved favorite. 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 339 

In Interlaken stands a tree, a great tree, the monarch of 
the wood, only less majestic than the Alps themselves, with 
its lordly branches, and great coronal of emerald, and deep 
cool shade, and as I saw the forest giant hemmed in by 
small houses my soul cried aloud for room to let the noble 
mammoth breathe, by making it free and unconfined, instead 
of suffering it to languish and to die surrounded by stifling 
limits. Mark it well, stranger. The dear old lady^ Mrs. 
Christian, will point it out to 3'ou, and will doubtless tell 
you how the American praj^ed with her to ask the authori- 
ties to give the lordly monarch air. 

Interlaken is the chief centre for wood sculptures and 
the exquisite little paintings which preserve and perpetuate 
the lovely Swiss lakes and mountains. These two voca- 
tions and keeping hotels seem to fill the winter and summer 
of the inhabitants. Without these resources hundreds 
would scarcely know how to exist, and without strangers 
Switzerland would be almost a solitude. Strike out the 
Americans, English, Russians, and Germans in the tide of 
travel that sweeps over the Continent, and the country 
would become bankrupt. American tourists are much 
more numerous than other travellers, with the exception of 
the English, and more generous and appreciative than any 
other nation. Tliere are more American artists in Rome 
than French, Russian, or English, and when we come to 
such places as Abbotsford and Stratford-on-Avon we find 
more Americans worshipping at the shrines of Shakespeare 
or Scott than Englishmen. We have great oceans to cross, 
yet year after yeRV in all seasons we penetrate every cranny 
of the Old World. Americans are at once the most enter- 
prising, liberal, inquisitive, inventive, and interesting people 
on the face of the globe. Wherever we turn our steps we 
meet them, yes ! and their contrivances, their dollars, and 
their books. 



340 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 



LETTER LXV. 

"I've roamed amonest the eternal Alps. I've stood 
And gazed on the diminished world below ; 
Marking, at frightful distance, field and flood, 
And spire and town, like things of pigmy show, 
Shrink into nothing : while those peaks of snow. 
While yet the winds themselves but seldom climb, 
Arose like giants from the void below." 

Bryan Waller Procter. 

Luzerne, July, 1878. 

Nature lias written a wonderful language in the topog- 
raph}' of Switzerland ; a language weird, mysterious, and 
inscrutable. These masses of rock, moulded into vast 
mountains and hurled into strange shapes ; these vast gla- 
ciers, extending continuously eighteen hundred miles, crop- 
ping out in perpetual snow, and again sparkling in solid 
masses of azure and iridescent ice, deep down in the earth ; 
these indescribable lakes of pure water; and then the abun- 
dant and dashing cascades flowing in glittering rivulets from 
the hills into the valleys, create altogether a region of cease- 
less and bewildering fascination. The Supreme ordinance 
has made of Switzerland an inexhaustible curiosity-shop to 
baffle modern science; and man has converted the mighty 
museum into a machine for speculation and show. Every- 
where we must render unto man tribute, to enjoy what 
nature gave us for nothing ; but he is no more an owner in 
these phenomena than myself. 

A short line of rail took me from Interlaken to the boat 
station on the Lake of Brienz, over which we glided to the 
Giessbach, the Niagara of Switzerland. This startling fall 
of water plunges from an altitude of eleven hundred and 
fort3'-eight feet into Lake Brienz in a series of seven cas- 
cades, bounding from rock to rock, and casting back its 
rainbow spray in jewels on the brown crags and bowlders. 
We halted at a rude plank landing, with only a shanty 
ticket-office, built against a projection of granite. There 
were many American and British tourists and a host of 
savage-looking old men with palanquins to carry delicate 
travellers to the mountain summit, — the only point from 
which the waterfall could be seen with satisfaction ; and as 
this was the chief thing to be seen in these wild mountains, 
those who would not submit to be conveyed by a couple of 
creatures who looked very like brigands, Alpine banditti, 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 341 

or gypsy blnoklegs, must stride up a mountain that seemed 
to lose its head in tlie clouds. I preferred tl«e hitter course 
to resigning myself into the care of these chevaliers- d'' In- 
dustrie. 

The path was good, but steep and narrow, and often dark, 
where the brown stone crags and walls came so thick and 
fast that not a fugitive glimmer falls athwart the track ; but 
there was ever the rush and crash of waters heard in the 
weird retreat. Sometimes the windings brought me out 
upon a sharp ledge, where, looking upward, I could see the 
great height from which the torrent sprang, and below the 
yawning and rock}^ chasm into which it plunged. I could 
feel the force of its flow, and the irresistible whirl of death 
in its terrible forces. The wind howled al»out me, and 
seemed to play with its power to hurl me into eternity. 
The higher 1 mounted the more of the light and warmth of 
God's hospitality shook from neaven into the narrow moun- 
tain defiles gladdened my way. I walked along, therefore, 
charmed by the thundering waters mingling in the wild 
saturnalia. 

Once upon the elevated plateau the scene was ineffably 
sweet, solemn, sublime, and picturesque; indeed, a divine 
crystallization of all the beauties I have described. 

A flight of steps led to the hotel ; of course there was a 
hotel (^where can we escape one ?). Seated on its emerald 
terrace, commanding a complete view of the Giessbach, 
which is invested with a peculiar interest, as well from the 
great volume of water that rushes, as it were, from an in- 
visible fountain into the green lake below, as from the rich 
and variegated foliage in which they are framed ; small 
tables and natty waiters stood ready to accommodate the 
weary climbers ; the gardens were thronged with visitors, 
and Alpine peasants, and bonnes; troubadours, and jugglers, 
too, joined the inelee. A gargon asked me if I would re- 
main all night? 1 turned upon the man with sudden sur- 
prise and said, " What ! remain here all night to sleep ? Do 
people ever stay here with that (pointing to the torrent) 
thundering machine opposite the window?" ''• Oh, yes !" 
he replied, with the provoking nonchalance that only an 
ignorant foreigner can assume , " the beobles say it make 
shleep ; or, if you object, we give you a back room ; but, ol» ! 
dat is de glory;" and then, as he drifted into an apostrophe 
to the cataract, I told him JSo! and ordered a slight lunch. 

On the left, far below, a lovely Swiss village slept amongst 
the hills, despite the hellish racket, like a freshly washed 

29* 



342 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

baby in its first slumber. It was green, and golden, and 
vvliile; and over the roads came neat peasants from their 
cottnge homes. It was a scene of niighlj^ majesty and do- 
cile domesticity that I rested upon until the veil of night 
unfurled its first gauzy folds. 

After the sharp edge of novelty produced by the crashing 
and splashing, and gleaming and streaming, and flushing 
and gushing torrent was dulled, I studied an American 
family' around me. There was the lord supreme, — to be con- 
ventional I begin with him, — a man rapidly approaching the 
vale of years, — and his wife and j)rogeny as distinctive and 
peculiar as the new civiLzation from which they came. He 
was a cotton, a woolen, or a railroad king, for he moved as 
if he had made his millions with sudden success. 1 liked 
him because he had the easy submissive conscious money 
air that spoke of complete content ; he seemed to care no 
more for Europe than for some impossible story of rabbini- 
cal lore. He was a resigned sacrifice on the altar of his 
wile's ambition and his children's desire, and that is why 
he had all my sympathy. Tlien, there was the wife and 
mother, a |)lump, pretty little woman about forty-five, ar- 
rayed in all the laces and feathers denied her in earlier 
(inys ; she was now supping bounteously upon the harvest 
feast of his investments ; she must be carried over the steep 
rough path in a palanquin ; how could she walk, and why 
should she? Having run barefoot over the thorny and 
stony ways of life, she now soothes away the memory of 
sharp cuts and weary pulls amid downy cushions. There 
was the first born, — a daughter of twenty-two, — a prim lit- 
tle person who assumed dilettante ways and tastes, and 
knew only enough to feel sure that the eldest of a rich 
house should tnke on herself much stale. Tlien there was 
the prince imperial to this noble line, say twenty ; he as 
their heir apparent had been pampered and petted until he 
was an annoyance to himself; he called for a dozen differ- 
ent dishes and drinks, and with oversateil palate and as- 
sumed fastidiousness dismissed them almost as rapidly as 
they were set before him. He was one of those miserable 
striplings at whose constitution premature disease was 
gnawing like a canker-worm. Besides the physical indis- 
position, he had contracted an insufferable ego. physi- 
cian! is there no vaccine to cheek the ravages of this hideous 
malady ? 

There was the younger daughter, a graceful girl of eigh- 
teen. She made her debut u[;on this " mortal coil" just in 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 343 

time to be taught her own insignificance in contrast with 
her elder sister and brother. The result was beneficial ; 
in place of an inflated pigmy she was a sweet sensible 
woman with the aroma of the seminary clinging to her 
skirts and a lingering love of books and nature ; she sat 
apart busily writing a description of the exquisite scene. 
Her two younger sisters, just at the age when girls do not 
know what to do with themselves, and nobody knows what 
to do with them, completed the family [mrty. 

And now my eyes fell upon the father, and my pity and 
tenderness were all his; out of the six dependent upon 
him, there was only one who was returning an atom of 
happiness after his long struggle. This is only one pic- 
ture of thousands of originals. 

The terrace seemed to be a rendezvous of the nations, 
including a band of wretched strolling minstrels, a con- 
glomeration unconsciously photographed. John Bull, al- 
ways in white towel as a headgear and reading Murray ; 
Mrs. Bull, rubicund and beery ; two Miss Bulls in long 
gray ulsters, "all buttoned down before;" the entire party 
silent and sour. The French gracefully attired and chat- 
tering like magpies. The Germans smoking long pipes 
and sketching the falls, while their tawny hair fell in 
"gust}' flow." A Swiss family, grandfather, grandmother, 
sons, daughters, and grandchildren, attended by fancy- 
costumed peasant women, made a beautiful little group in 
the rocky platform. Withal, the American family was the 
most attractive, genteel, and intelligent. But, is it not 
natural that we should search for the faidts of our own 
children, because we are ambitious they should rise above 
the ordinary level ? 

The Giessbach is frequently compared to Niagara, but 
the simile is as preposterous as likening the Thames to the 
Mississippi. If Niagara were on the Continent it would 
be turned into as many sources of profit by speculators as 
if the Europeans had discovered and brought down be- 
tween heaven and earth a new celestial world. 

At 8 P. M. the falls were to be illuminated, for which I 
did not wait, as it is a sad fraud, like many other things 
in this land of natural marvels and hollow artifices. But 
descending the gray and ghostly paths, followed and 
flanked bv elves and wraiths, to the music of roarino; 
waters and reverberating shouts on the higher heights, I 
reached the lake, where I was importuned by a brigade of 
ruffian boatmen to cross in their little skiffs and under 



344 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

their protection, an honor I declined, and waited for the 
steamer for Brienz, which lay modestly waiting across the 
lake. 

Brienz is a little village of wooden houses stretched 
along the mountain base, with a quaint hotel — " La Croix 
Blanche" — where we had a capital supper at 9 P. M. In 
the twilight the peasants were driving home the goats and 
mules, while their tinkling bells made silver music between 
the hills. Some came with their wood sculptures, others 
laden with food, for the morrow would be Sunday, and 
little mouths must be fed in these tall, bleak mountains. 
-Ah! what a life it seemed as I gazed upon the broad hon- 
est-faced women and burly men, with no thought of the 
great world beyond. All looked so simple and sweet and 
arcadian, yet human passion and human vices rage even 
here. Where there is life there is sin. 

A natty femme-de-chambre in the hotel spoke English 
with such an unmistakable American accent that I was 
tempted to ask her wiiere she was l)orn, and she answered 
in the State of Missouri ! On account of business reverses 
her father had returned to his native valley. Now 1 en- 
deavored to extract philosophy from the stor}', but I 
failed. However dark the times, however degenerate and 
torpid the town, there could be no spot in America so ut- 
terly destitute of wa^s and means of existence as this 
Alpine dell. 

Next morning, bright and early, really too early to pro- 
mote good temper, I was wakened by the jingling bells of 
the diligence that was to carry me over the Brunig Pass. 
Now crossing the Alpine pass in a Federal post was some- 
thing new, and mj' sensations were those of ecstasy as I 
looked down upon the cumbrous establishment fashioned 
after those of the English systetn of old-time travelling. 
Five spirited steeds stood neighing, impatient to be off on 
their mountainous jaunt, whips cracked and horns blew, 
while my spirits rose in consonance with the new and joy- 
ous sounds about me. So after breakfasting at 6.^0 A.M., 
we started on the hazardous journey. The day was 
glorious ! No dust, no flies, no heat, and the sun as mod- 
erate as in September; and though I wrapped a heavy 
shawl about me as we set off, the advancing day soon 
equalized the chilly temperature. I must needs have the 
choice seat at the banquet — on the top of the diligence, so 
I mig^ht miss no mite of the phenomenal panorama. 

Thoughts of crossing the Brunig had always excited my 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 345 

fanc3^, but T liad formed no conception of its singular exor- 
cism. I met nature in her grandest and gentlest moods. 
I have never seen the Rocky Mountains, but those who 
have, describe the Brunig and the mighty chain of granite 
fastnesses of which it is a link, as far more imposing and 
complicated ; not so vast and comprehensive, but closer, 
more involved, and marvellous. Here even the untrained 
mind realizes the difficulty of constructing railroads in 
Switzerland. 

We came to little villages amongst the rocks ; hamlets 
that were only a handful of shanties squatted down on no- 
body's land; and here people lived and were happy. Yet 
how did they exist ? Only through Nature's providence. 

The public highway wound like like a petrified serpent 
along the sides of these primitive formations ; as I looked 
down from the cool heights where the eagle eyries, my brain 
fairly reeled to see the people dwindling to manikins, and 
their habitations into tiny black spots. Our chariot hung 
at times, on the rocky ledges as if held thereby some mag- 
netic power. Higher and higher we rose, rougher and 
steeper the road at each advance, until we attained an alti- 
tude of 6581 feet above sea level. Having reached the top- 
most point of our route we began gradually to descend 
toward lovely Lucerne. 

All along these deserted coils I found Swiss chalets large 
enough to accommodate two or three families, whose only 
source of livelihood is wood-carving. Their sheds, attached 
to the house, were well stocked with the requisites of their 
art. And so they pass their days in their forest homes. 
In winter the}" carve, and in summer they sell in the near- 
est towns the fragile wares that find their way into every 
American home. Whenever we passed toy or blackberry 
venders, with their scanty store spread in an alcove of rock, 
and overshadowed by great hanging craggy canopies, it 
was the herald to our approach to a town, — towns where 
we saw only a hotel that seemed slack of guests and~enter- 
tainment at the same time, and only a stopping place to 
gather the mails and water our horses. 

In the sweet Sabbath morning the Catholic peasants 
thronged the paths in vast numbers on their way to Mass ; 
and though rather well dressed, judging by their habitations 
among the hills the}' were miserably poor. Nothing could 
be more deplorable than the most of their homes, and I 
shuddered as I tiiought of their privations in this dismal 
region during the long, cheerless winters. Men, women, 



346 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

and children, like mountain chamois, climbed the rough 
roads, and greeted the Federal post with passing smiles. 

What ghastly and indescribable battlements this rocky 
region presents to the strangerl At times the coach plunged 
into deep valle3's, from which I looked up to the stony forts, 
that pierced the very clouds ; then we crawled along tiie 
crest of a precipice, from which 1 gazed into an almost un- 
fathomable abyss. 

jt was a six hours' journey over the hills, and in the in- 
terval we passed other lakes, considerable towns, and many 
beautiful valleys. But of all the dales for sweet salubrity, 
gentle and thriving domesticity, luxuriant pastures, and 
glowing orchards, give me the Valley of Sarnen, lying side 
by side with its azure lake abounding in finny food. Oh, 
what a wealth of nature was there ! Gr^t Phoebus poured 
his lusty light with double force upon the fair undulations 
of the sapphire lake by being closed out of the gray cran- 
nies beyond, and kissed all about him into a glow of beauty. 
8i)arkling waters lost themselves in the clefts of rocks, 
while the old groined hillsides shone in girdles of jewels. 

In the town I found a better civilization, a higher degree 
of comfort, and more intelligence was revealed. The peas- 
ants of Sarnen have a peculiar and picturesque costume; 
all the women interlace the plaits of tiieir hair with white 
ribbons fastened with a unique spoonlike silver buckle. 
But how few were comely! even the youngest were hard- 
featured and prematurely wrinkled. Sunday, as it was, 
everywhere many were working in the fields, and generally 
not a man to be seen. All this district is under Romish 
influence ; Catholic churchyards. Catholic churches, crosses, 
and wayside shriiics, nuns and children saying their rosa- 
lies and Ave Maria predominated, and as we approached 
the Lake of Lucerne, the papal preponderance became more 
and more apparent ; but there was not a beggar on the 
route. 

Descending my lofty throne on the back of the diligence, 
I stepped upon the pretty steamer at Alpnach and sailed 
up the lovely lake. Inconceivably grand was the scene as 
we proceeded along the famous water, with its jutting prom- 
ontories and vast mounds of alluvial deposit. On our left 
Bigi, and to the right Pilatus escorted us, both shores in- 
dented with handsome villas and antique towns, while many 
of the heights were crowned with military and medical in- 
stitutions. The water was a level sheet of emerald, and as 
I leaned over the taffrail 1 saw in the little crevices of the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 34t 

liills iirtificial fountains casting up their silver spray, while 
pushed out from the coast were wharves which sent forth 
and received passengers. Neat boats were gracefullj^ gli<^- 
ing over the waveless main, and as if to harmonize with 
the Sundaj' panorama a band of Protestant singers blended 
their voices in the touching sacred melody of the '" Sweet- 
By-and-By." The familiar strains carried my memory to 
my own dear home, so far away. 

1 had been among other charming scenes before — in the 
majestic harbor of New York, Delaware Bay, Boston Bay, 
the unrivalled ocean home at Martha's Yineyard, Chesa- 
peake Bay, the Potomac at Washington, and I have lin- 
gered in the glamour of the Gulf of Genoa, the Gulf of Lyons 
at Marseilles, the Mediterranean at Nice, tlie Neapolitan 
Bay, the beautiful Seine, and the slug:^ish Thames in its 
sweetest resting-places, but never was I so affected as by 
the superlative influences of the quiet Sabbath noon on the 
waters of Lucerne. 



LETTER LXYI. 

"E'en now, where Alpine solitudes ascend, 
I sit me down a pensive hour to spend ; 
And placed on high aoove the storm's career, 
Look dow^nward where an hundred realms appear ; 
Lakes, forests, cities, plains extending wide, 
The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride." 

Oliver Goldsmith. 

Lucerne, over the Rigi, July, 1878. 

Apart from the unrivalled position of Lucerne on the 
lake, lovingly placed in the amphitheatre formed by sur- 
rounding mountains, the most impressive feature of the 
city is its consistent and singular cleanliness and the 
superexcellence of its hotels. All along the Schweizerhof 
Quay, fronting the lake, there is such a cordon of these 
gorgeous palaces, that one wonders how they are sup- 
ported in this town of 14,500 ; and as we drove out on the 
more sequestered roads leading to Kussnacht and the 
great mountains there were more of these same superb 
structures. The season is short, but the influx of visitors 



348 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

increases each day from the middle of June until the last 
of August, when there is a general stagnation. Yet, at 
Lucerne, the charges are moderate, and the entertainment 
surpasses most of the other mountain cities. 

Lucerne is held in the protecting arms of the strongest 
Swiss battlements, some rearing their desolate heights in 
solitary splendor, others bound peak to peak by iron road 
orbrkfge; and again, those that stand in all the virginal 
iciness of purity. Lucerne may truly boast of its position 
and environs, perhaps of its legendary associations, but in 
the city there is little of artistic beauty or interest. 

The famous Lion of Lucerne, cut in the solid sandstone, 
in a romantic corner of the town, after a model by the 
illustrious Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen, in memory of the 
Swiss officers and soldiers who fell in defence of the ex- 
piring French monarchy of Louis XYL, in their noble 
efforts to save the Tuileries, August, 1792, is onl}' interest- 
ing by the story it relates. The art may be marvellous, 
chiselled as it is from the fixed bowlder of sandstone, but 
it is illy kept, and a spring above it drips its everlasting 
trickle into a stagnant pool, which does not represent the 
picture we sometimes see of the expiring beast reflected in 
a crystal green lake. The royal lion, while writhing in the 
agonies of death, protects the French shield and jieur de lis 
with its paw. True, the ex{)ression of unuttered suffering 
of the colossus is effective, and when I first saw it I ex- 
claimed, " Oh, the dying gladiator." This was the first 
and strongest impression the work made upon me ; so has 
it remained. It seems a curious memento for a republic 
to hold amongst its choice treasures, but the work is con- 
sidered a supreme achievement, and it is in this light that 
it is cherished for posterity, and also to perpetuate the 
bravery of the Swiss Guard of the unfortunate Louis and 
his queen. 

The " Gladiator" is shown gratis, but as if to express 
regret for the liberality one franc is charged admittance to 
the glacier garden adjoining. Now a glacier breathes vol- 
umes of wonderful and reverential things to me. So, this 
so-called phenomenon I must see, if, like Prometheus, I 
must filch the fire from heaven to obtain entrance. There 
were no such violent means required, however, and I do 
not believe I was ever tricked by so poor a cheat. There 
were no glaciers, some bad statuary — which might have 
been petrified in ice — a number of inexplicable aerolites, 
several sickl}' fountains, a long hysteric stair of rustic logs 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 349 

ascending to a cupola, a catchpenny model of the sur- 
rounding lake and mountain system, and a few dilapidated 
birds. What it all meant I could not conceive ; my expec- 
tations soared to a glorious height of iridescent hills and 
azure caves. When these beauties did not burst upon my 
vision I was disappointed ; still, I considered them worth 
hunting, though I had not thought that would be required 
of me, but having searched and not found them 1 went 
away sore and sorrowing, and consoled myself by trying 
to extract comfort out of the long scientific account in the 
guide-book of all that I could not interpret. 

Across the Ruesse, whose green waters divide the city, 
are several superannuated bridges, that are quite as ridicu- 
lous as municipal shows. They are profusely decorated 
with paintings; every crossbeam and arch, every panel 
and post, is covered with pigments and portraits from 
startling designs ; it seems as if some artist of unappre- 
ciated genius had passed his days in this shabby work for 
the love of it, for certainly no authorities could ever have 
so disgraced the city property. One contained a hundred 
and fifty-four paintings, representing events from the lives 
of the patron saints of Lucerne ; the other " the Dance of 
Death," and here the artist had an open field to indulge 
his passion for the horrible and hideous. They were bad 
originally, judging by the sad remains left by the ravages 
of time. Nevertheless the hotel architecture of Lucerne is 
superlative. Art seems to have made its best work there. 

It is generally and habitually asserted that wherever 
Catholicism prevails in Switzerland, there is lack of thrift, 
order, and enterprise ; but here the accusation fails. The 
town and population are models of propriety, gentility, 
and cleanliness. Mendicity is also charged against the 
Continental Catholics, and it is fully verified in Southern 
Italy, but I did not meet a beggar in Lucerne, and impo- 
sitions were scarce. 

To see Altorf and William^Tell's chapel, once at Lucerne, 
was like visiting Yersailles from Paris. As we put out from 
shore en route to the spot commemorated by that wonder- 
ful feat of archery, so long ago that we begin to doubt the 
apple story (not but that we know there were apples at the 
time, for the apple is at the bottom of all mischief, but 
then you see another apple story, of national fame, has 
succeeded it in America), we saw brightly painted boats to 
the memory of Tell and Winkelreid and other Swiss re- 
publican heroes. Every point, whether promontory or 
30 



350 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

island, eveiy hill and valley, is planted with trees and 
flowers, decorated with little white shrines, where wooden 
virgins pray in gentle peace. The little towns along 
the lake were crowded with tourists, and gayly dressed 
strangers thronged about the quays to welcome the in- 
comers, or wave farewell to the departing guests. The 
scene was full of harmony with the silence of nature and 
the repose of man. The lake-border seemed in holiday trim, 
but on the boat humanity was industriously satisfying the 
inner hunger. 

A Swiss lake steamer is a new study of the habits of 
travellers. Eating and drinking is the universal pastime. 
It begins early and continues througli the entire tour. As 
soon as the boat drops oif the quay the Swiss families who 
have come for an outing, order the rations, but whether 
the eating was a labor or a pleasure I could not discern. 
My first conception was that it was a pleasure; but when 
it ran through hours I concluded it had grown into a sort 
of duty. The Swiss are as successful in the practice of 
eating cheese and drinking beer as the English, who never 
travel by land or sea without five full meals a day. 

Tell's i)latte at Fluelen/was our destination ; a very poorly 
painted, fragile little hut, covered with awkward frescoes, 
and scrawled over with vulgar pencilled names and designs 
to keep alive the doubtful tradition of the dramatic patriot 
of Switzerland, which Schiller and Sheridan Knowles have 
lauded into enduring fame by their glorious pla^'^s. Then 
why should we cherish these ambiguous memories when 
Switzerland has a stronger hold on the respect of man in 
its real poets, heroes, and statesmen ? By the names of 
Winkelreid, Freliegrath, and Zwingle, on the boats and 
penaioiis^ I felt compensated for the disappointment at 
TelPs chapel and its destitution of historical foundation. 

Next day a steamer carried us from Lucerne to Yitznau, 
a mountain village with a new and elegant station, whence 
the railway starts over the Rigi, that formidable and 
hitherto insurmountable granite barrier. I do not know 
which contemplation had for me the most fascination, 
crossing the Brunig or ascending and descending the Rigi. 
The former was invested with all romance and ecstas}'' but 
no fear, while Rigi inspired me with horrible forebodings 
of being suddenly precipitated from a cloudy pinnacle into 
an abysmal ravine with a mass of broken bones and man- 
gled flesh closing the last struggle for life. The railway 
that traverses and connects this series of lofty peaks is 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 351 

Gonstructed in imitation of the iron road which brings the 
White Mountains of New England into communication 
with the heretofore isolated sky-world of that region. 

It is only since 1848 this mysterious and interesting com- 
bination of rock and ice, lying between Lakes Lucerne and 
Zug, arrested the serious attention of men of science and 
generous governments. Before that period this vast moun- 
tain system was only a district of cowherds, pastnre-lands, 
and a colony of degenerate peasants' huts. Before then 
pilgrims made the tour of these steep, and rugged, and de- 
serted paths with much labor and fatigue. The railway 
gauge is constructed after the model of the ordinary Ame- 
rican road, but it has rails within rails provided with teeth 
on which a cog-wheel under the locomotive catches with 
each revolution. The locomotives are of one hundred and 
twenty horse-power, having upright boilers, and the pas- 
senger carriages are placed always above the engine, from 
which it is disconnected by couplings, and can be stopped 
instantaneously in case of accidents ; and although I per- 
fectly understood the system and was doubly assured of 
the impossibility of danger, yet as the train began to crawl 
ui) the hill backward like a little iron crab, and I felt the 
car sloping away from me till my sensation was akin to that 
of hanging on the inclination of the roof of some high 
building, a thrill of terror convulsed me, which was not 
decreased as I looked from my starry height into the 
frightful vacancy below. 

Being the height of tiie season the little station platform 
was staggering beneath its human freight that surged and 
scrambled for places as the train came up to our side. Our 
ascent through the beautiful little pastoral village was 
gradual, and after passing a few of the loftier altitudes an 
exquisite view of the green lake, the spires and towers of 
Lucerne, and tiien one by one the famous Alpine summits 
dawned upon us, and lastly, as a frame to the picture, came 
the undulating yet unbroken wave-line of the Bernese 
Oberland. A half an hour on our airy tour and we pene- 
trated a tunnel through conglomerate rock as suddenly as 
a lightning flash, and only emerged to cross a fragile 
trestle bridge spanning a dark and awful gorge, seventy- 
five feet deep. At this perilous point in the flight the reck- 
less passengers rushed to the right of the car to gaze ifito 
the gap below, and made the air hideous with exclamations 
about its imposing beauty, while the little car swayed and 
shook with the overbalancing weight. Step by step we 



352 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

penetrated forest and rocky wastes at an easy gradient, 
passing peasants and tourists making the journey, some on 
foot, others astride tiieir braying beast. The sensations 
may have been something like those experienced in a rising 
balloon, with this difference, the earth did not recede fro;n 
us ; we gradually seemed to be melting into illimitable 
space. Desi)ite the possible calamities, it was glorious to 
rise like a bird in air, and floating among azure clo*uds and 
misty mountain-tops gaze into the heart of the valleys be- 
low, the shimmering lakes, and mountains of glowing ver- 
dure, hemmed in by dazzling ridges of ice, unmelted by the 
fiery glance and scorching breath of the sun, and to hear 
the sweet tinkle of cow-bells coming from the deep vales, 
mellowed and mingling in the nebulous air and perfumes of 
the sweet Jul}'. 

The two intermediate stations, Kaltbad and Staffel, were 
busy scenes of tourist life; but why rest at the gate or 
vestibule when we might mount to the cupola of the 
Nymphs and Satyrs' glorious mansion ? So we pushed on 
to Rigi-Kulm, where, pausing on the minaret of the granite 
temple, I turned my eyes upon the marvellous panorama 
around me. Various emotions struojorjed for utterance and 
choked each other in their rapid succession. First, the 
boundless power and majesty of God ; the daring confidence 
and ingenuity of man ; the sad and benighted story related 
by the antediluvian homes perched on these inaccessible 
towers by generations passed away, who trod these paths 
and knew only of earth what tliey could see far, far beneath 
them ; like the crows, they had grown old and died in the 
trees where they were born. 

The lower dales lay at our feet with the lines of the farms, 
and streams, and roads, fain* by the distance, greatly re- 
sembling a to3' miniature of some distant metropolis. Few 
of the pioneers of the granite hills ever trod the earth at 
the base of the Rigi, but worshipped God and nature 
among their own fields and herds. Close by was the more 
pretentious modern civilization ; the outgrowth of the rail- 
road and the course of intelligent travel attracted from all 
parts of the world. 1 seemed to be standing on the edge 
of a great planet, with all the marvels, air, sky, and water 
and land spread out below and around me. Then again I 
felt suspended in the atmosphere like the fairy on the great 
bird in the Arabian Nighti>^ when the snow-clad Alps, one 
hundred and twenty miles in length, burst upon my aston- 
ished gaze : the chain began in the far east, and growing 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 353 

noarer and nearer I saw the hnge snowy crests of the bleak 
Glarnisch range, with their long white lines connecting 
with the other ice giants of the series ; then my eyes 
travelled to the Bernese Alps and tlieir shining peaks, the 
A¥etterhorn and Jungfrau standing out in all the sub- 
limity of silent and solitary majesty. The lakes shone 
like silver mirrors below, the villages were painted pictures, 
and the rivers meandered through the green campagna like 
silken cords. Away beyond were the battlements and 
towers of Lucerne, of schoolhouse and hospital, dense wood- 
lands of the Black Forest, and the overguarding serrated 
peaks of sombre, weird Pilatus. 

Bej'oud and above all these glories is the sunrise and 
sunset seen from the majestic peaks. All that I saw from 
the car window is exhibited in the dawn in new lights and 
cooler radiance ; as bright day advances the lakes seem to 
rise near enough that we may see the ripples caused by 
tossing in a stone, the beauties of the landscape flash upon 
us in duplicated colors, and the ice, that has a cold stony 
glitter under the rays of the full-risen sun, is at this hour 
suffused in warm ros3' haze. 

The motley groups gathered upon Kulm to watch for 
the superb coming of the sun make of it a sort of Tower of 
Babel, a conglomerate of dialects. There is no intimacy 
between the various elements of this cosmopolitan camp- 
meeting. Strangers they are and strangers they remain. 
Strangers they come and strangers they go. One bond 
only have they, that of curiosity, and it evaporates with the 
dissolving tints of the mountain pageant. 

Having risen to the clouds from Lake Lucerne, the enter- 
tainment ended, we prepared to reach the mundane sphere 
over the route leading to Arth, on the opposite side of the 
great pile from V^itznau. Not nearly so perilous, wild, or 
lengthy was our line of descent. The district was very 
much like the Allegheny section of [Pennsylvania, and in a 
fraction more than an hour we fouud ourselves on the bor- 
ders of Lake Zug. Yery peaceful, and fruitful, and rural 
is this famous vallej^ Harvest and ha3'making are close 
neighbors in these mountain solitudes, and pretty valleys 
are sent like compensations for the sterilit}'- of the ravines 
of the higher latitudes. While Providence sends Alps on 
Alps to Switzerland, and countless marvels of lakes, it 
vouchsafes insuflScient harvests; neither gold, nor coal, nor 
silver is among the treasures of these mountains. So, 
the poor mountaineer must buy his fuel from Germany, his 

30* 



354 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

food from the Baltic, and his light from the petroleum of 
Pennsylvania. 

The Valley of Arth, the Lake of Zug, and its city form 
an elaborate and glowing entry to the city of Zurich. 



LETTER LXVII. 

*' On Zurich's spires, with rosy light, 

The mountains smile at morn and eve, 
And Zurich's waters, blue and bright, 
The glories of those hills receive." 

Thomas Buchanan Read. 

Zurich, July, 1878. 

Although it was an intensely tropical afternoon when 
I came into Zurich, yet I marked the absence of dust and 
insects. Its position at the head of its lake, bisected as it 
is by several small streams and rivers, may be the antidote 
to the former pest, while it would be only reasonable to 
suppose these very causes would prove hotbeds of mos- 
quitos and vermin. 

Zurich is fascinating from its resemblance to Venice in 
the color of sky and water toward sunset, and this impres- 
sion is enhanced by the rosy haze that hangs from and 
partly veils the distant mountains, and the expression of 
the clear perspective of the rushing lake tributaries, that 
seem drifting far away to some distant ocean. Still, trans- 
formed into an almost Italian-looking city by the influ- 
ences of color and climate, and by its busy life about 
the quays, the preponderance of German elements weighs 
down the whole place. There are the heavy, graceless 
lines of Teutonic art, the broad awkward physique of the 
women, the stolid bearing of the men. Indeed, the bridges, 
boats, public institutions, and monuments all speak of a 
race of beer drinkers and spec consumers. There are 
indeed some modern squares, some glittering shops, and 
other transcripts of Parisian prototypes, but they are 
sad hybrids among the heavy crumbling stones of the 
Sweitzer antiquities. 

Even the villas bordering the water-edges seem to have 
lost their beauty of outline, being neither French nor Ger- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 355 

man ; 3'et here again the wonderful natural points of grace 
and sublimity in all the vicinage fully compensate for the 
defects of human creation. 

Switzerland lacks entirely the palatial inland steamers 
of the United States. Indeed, from the Mersey to the 
Mediterranean, no such superb floating hotels are ever 
met as adorn our great American rivers. But Switzer- 
land, like Venice, is a marvellous architect of the graceful 
smaller craft which pi}'- like butterflies up and down her 
narrow streams. 

Zurich being a learned city — a city of schools, semina- 
ries, societies, and libraries — is also a musical cit}^, and 
every evening in the Tonhalle, a fine open saloon on the 
lake, are excellent concerts, and sometimes balls, where all 
classes mingle. Seated around little tables, they eat, 
drink, and decorously make merry, while out on the glit- 
tering starlit water, hundreds of the more exclusive resi- 
dents or travellers linger in their dancing boats and enjoy 
the music of one of the finest orchestras I have met since 
I left Paris. Thougii our position on the lake was satis- 
factory, by paying twelve cents admission fee we changed 
it for a seat in the temple of harmony, where the audience 
was wholly genteel, consisting for the most part of trades- 
men and their families enjo3ing wine and waltzes in true 
domestic fashion. Unlike such amusements in America, 
these concert gardens partake of no feature of the variety 
show, and are tlierefore ever the resort of the refined. 
Curiously, this tabernacle of Erato is transformed every 
Friday into the scene of a discordant body by tlie sessions 
of the Zurich Exchange or Bourse, where hundreds and 
thousands of cotton dealers, silk manufacturers, railway 
kings, and expatriated ex-sovereigns, eagerly congregate to 
risk their fortunes upon the turbulent waters of barter, 
here frequently most violently agitated, especially among 
the silk merchants. But the hall of mellifluous cadences 
will not long be defiled by the money-changers after the 
new Bourse is completed, now constructing, which is to be 
not only an imposing adornment to the city, but an epitaph 
in stone to the generous citizen who bequeathed several 
millions of francs as a tribute of gratitude to the town in 
which he accumulated his fortune ; and his grand gift pays 
for the new exchange. 

Zurich is the centre of varied and conflicting theories, 
and I was much surprised to find in this republican centre 
so many sympathizers with monarchy, and to hear of a 



356 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

succession of discrowned German noblemen among its 
Jtabitues. But disturbers of the peace, enemies of .kings 
and murderers of royalt}^, lilve Nobling and his associates, 
make this a point also of rendezvous and convergence. 
The community is of pronounced sentiments and strong 
attachments to republican institutions ; and free speech is the 
motto of the little rei)ublic as it is of our greater one. The 
Zurich hotels are indifferent after enjoying the superiority 
of those of Lucerne. They are costly, and while the Baur au 
Lac may boast an unrivalled position at the confluence of 
the lake and the Limmat, with extensive wooded gardens, 
that seem to float in the stream, the Bellevue, on the oppo- 
site quay, adds poor fare and bad attendance to excessive 
charges. Carriage hire is double in republican Zurich 
what it is in imperial Korae. The charming simplicity of 
the better classes is shown by their willingness to walk in 
Zurich, while in the southern and sleepy cities of Italy 
even the lazzaroni must ride. 

In the suburbs of Zurich, upon an elevation overlooking 
the city and a noble stretch of country, there is a charming- 
resort. Wear}' merchants ride out here in summer after- 
noons to dine under the shade of great trees, and travellers 
leave the city without enjoying one of its greatest luxuries 
unless they have, as we had, resident friends to conduct 
them thither. Little tables are spread on the brow of the 
hill in the open air, and all around the grounds are old 
ladies knitting, young ones reading, with their children 
jjlaying at their side or rocking in the swings ; here and 
there family parties dining upon frugal cake and red wine. 
There was no idle curiosity, as is always the case with too 
many of the hollow pretenders who infest the great hotels; 
no vulgar staring crowds, and no whispered comment. No 
sooner does a stranger take a seat than he becomes one of 
the domestic circle at the lowly Beau Sejour ; humble and 
unostentatious it was, but had it been more aristocratic 
and costly, it could not have been maintained without the 
presence of, what is called at home, the fast class. Here 
the light wines and modest charges repress intoxication, 
and the meretricious element, even if it were allowed, would 
not patronize its plain domesticity. 

From this lofty seat the city lay compact and smoky be- 
neath; great columns of gray and white steam issued from 
the chimneys of the factories, while broad avenues of trees 
gradually insinuated themselves through blocks of houses 
and old streets, until all circumscribed city line was dis- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 35t 

solver! in vineyards and orchards, or mazes of shrubbery. 
The city was divided into two sections, and bordered upon 
an outer margin by the waters of the Limmat and the Sihl, 
like roads of shining crystal, until they joined and flowed 
in one channel. Dark ridges of rock bound the city and 
its environs, and these were again bound by the succession 
of snowy crests of the beautiful Glarnisch range, that 
rested their silver peaks in clear outline against the ever- 
changing and duplicating colors of the clouds. These per- 
spectives were as lovely as those of the Jungfrau — the pre- 
siding divinity of Interlaken. 

Although there is no communication between Switzerland 
and the ocean, yet her fresh-water seas, her crystal lakes, 
and the blue and arrowy mountain currents, furnish forth 
a varied feast of fancy and of food ; a feast for the imagina- 
tion in matchless landscape, and endless supplies for the 
inner man ; and eagerly do the Swiss seize these attractions 
and convert them into wealth. Their best hotels are placed 
upon the quays. Again we note the strange similarity be- 
tween these silent streams and the quiet monotony of the 
Grand Canal at Venice. The pure waters of Lake Zurich 
and the wedded streams adjacent promote the health of 
the hordes of stalwart men and women, and are the uncon- 
scious contributors to the exquisite quality of its silks, 
which create the local nabobs and millionaires. 

There is no better place to study and satisfy one's self 
as to the existence of a prehistoric world than in the anti- 
quarian department of the town library at Zurich. If I, 
with the rest of mankind, fell a victim to the popular fal- 
lacy of regarding all we read of the mammoth epoch 
amusing extravaganzas, coined from an exceedingl}'^ fertile 
but erratic brain, has the fault rested with the community 
of readers, or with the few who knew or assumed to know 
of what they wrote? Why should whole lives be passed 
in scientific experiments or explorations if it be not to en- 
rich and instruct mankind ? For years every atom of self- 
existent matter, relative to the ages preceding written 
tradition, culled from the earth by the archjeologist and 
cherished by the antiquarian, has been woven into a fairy 
tale for small boys. These works were not only perused 
with doubt by the masses, but, literally, with the feeling 
that there was not a word or line of them that the author 
had intended to be believed. But these very works set 
forth some years ago as conglomerates of trash, to-day 
take fresh hold upon the best minds of the world. It is 



358 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

certainly not to the advancement of mankind to have new 
discoveries presented as vagaries. Theadbare historical 
facts may serve as a basis to scores of romantic tales, but 
paradoxical theories treated in a like manner can exert 
none other than an evil influence. 

Now, in this museum, there is abundant proof of the lake 
dwellings which existed in these territories through the 
epoclis of stone, bronze, and iron, thousands of years be- 
fore the birth of Christ ; here are the relics of the wonder- 
ful discovery of a people more or less civilized living in tlie 
water valleys between the Alps in houses, or rather huts, 
erected upon piles driven in the bottom of the lake. 

" In the winter of 1853-54 the Swiss streams and lakes 
were lower than they had ever been known. At Meilin, on 
Lake Zurich, some workmen took advantage of the receded 
waters to excavate earth from the lake beds, for the pur- 
pose of filling in additional garden spots on the shore ; 
while thus engaged they were astonished by striking their 
spades into wliat proved to be the tops of many wooden 
piles, arranged in clusters and in rows." This is the key- 
note to the whole amazing revelation. 

Before me were spread miniature model plans of the 
homes of these antique and mysterious people, built upon 
piles driven in the early lake-beds, until rotting away by 
the slow progress of time they formed peat, upon which 
other similar piles were erected, and new villages grew up 
upon tiie homes and graves of those who had gone centu- 
ries before. Their implements of labor, the ornaments 
they wore, their cooking utensils, the vestiges of their 
clothing, and the remains of their food, tell only half the 
secret of the unravelled mystery. Here are the evidences 
of cities that were old when Pompeii was in its inftincy. 
Strongest amongst the proofs is the number of cubes of 
peat formed under the water. The known period it re- 
quires to grow this substance being calculated, if we could 
tell nothing of the era of their existence by the relics of 
stone and bronze, is the one fact of nature to destroy all 
incredulity. Those who might have been doubters at home 
can be so no longer, after such a personal experience as I 
had in the presence of performed facts. 

Science is quietly assuming the ascendency all over the 
universe, and presently, that is, in the course of a century 
or two, there will be no mile of sky, no spot of earth, and 
no rood of water, that will not be probed by the chemist, 
the astronomer, the geologist, the geographer, the anato- 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 359 

mist, or the explorer. What all such processes will do, 
we can foretell by what they have done. The outlook is 
very interesting, and we may fondly hope that if man has 
entered upon so grand a career, he may improve himself as 
he improves the face of the world in which he lives. 



LETTER LXYIII. 

The Temple builders, where are they ! 
The worshippers most passed away ; 
Who came the first to offer there 
The song' of praise, the heart of prayer ! 
Man's generation passes soon- 
It comes and changes like the moon. 
He rears the perishable wall, 
But ere it crumble he himself must fall. 

Anonymous. 

Strassburg, July, 1878. 

Switzerland is so small a country in comparison with 
the rest of Europe, that despite her beautiful lakes, great 
mountains, and brave people, one is compelled to wonder 
why she has not been ground to powder by the great nations 
ranged about her. So, when I left Zurich, bidding farewell 
to Switzerland, for Constance, a German town in the prov- 
ince of Baden-Baden, it was very like leaving a village for 
the broader sights of a vast city. 

There was the usual array of Alpine heights and glens 
flush with the fragrant flowers of rural rest until we came 
in sight of the Rhine Falls, whose foaming flow varied the 
German-Swiss picture. This cataract, a tame transcript of 
the white thunders of Niagara, is a cascade of greater vol- 
ume than any other in Europe. Erom tlie car window I 
could enjoy in quiet dignity the voluminous efl^ux of the 
upper waters and the agitation of the lower stream, as the 
torrent after leaping over three unequal ridges of rock 
plunged into its channel, fermenting the glassy green surge 
into a broil of creamy froth, and rushing away down the 
tide in a variegated foam. There were little skiffs, driven 
around in the whirlpool by the waves, that seemed about to 
be rifled of their human freight, while numerous rainbows 
formed above them in arches of spray. Perhaps it would 
have been a proof of my own intrepidity had I risked 



360 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

my life in one of these cockle-shells that I miglit gaze from 
the pavilion on the summit of the central rock into the 
wliirl below, or traced the man}'' footpaths to the iron 
platform overhanging the roaring abyss, or mounted the 
terraces and parapets near the sluices left and right, but 
1 relinquished all these delights in favor of the pleasanter 
memories of a safe inside situation. 

I do not know if one may say he has seen a town by 
merely riding through its streets and along its wharves, but 
1 feel sure I saw as much of the municipality of Schaff- 
hausen in my desultory rambles as if I had lived there 
several weeks. I saw that it retained all the deformities 
and none of the beauties of its mediaeval origin. The build- 
ings were, without exception, tall and flat, with a garish 
showing of rude mosaic fa§ades and flashy frescoes, with 
florid Dutch cornices and buttresses and rude adornments 
in startling places. They were dimmed and blackened by 
age, and seemed falling to decay, while the streets were un- 
cleanly ; and the fierce rays of the sun which fell over and 
among all this moth-eaten, rusty community of drones, only 
exaggerated the deficiencies. In the tropical summer noon 
the windows and shutters were all closed, the city was 
asleep, and the atrocious statuary of the old town stood 
boldly forth in hideous ugliness. 

A boat that would have been a disgrace to a Pennsylva- 
nia canal before railroads were dreamed of lay at the crum- 
bling, worm-eaten wharf to carry us up the Rhine, and over 
Lake Constance. It was little larger than the old-fashioned 
passenger craft employed between Harrisburg and Wil- 
liarasport, but without a single convenience of those tor- 
toise conveyances, with one exception : it was propelled by 
steam. First and second class passengers were carried on 
the upper and only deck, and indeed, when cattle were 
brought aboard at some of the lake stations, thej^ too occu- 
l)ied a corner of the same floor. There were long benches 
of rude slats alternated with spaces, through which the 
occupants were in imminent danger of falling, if the utmost 
care was not practised when disposing of the body. Per- 
forated and ventilated backs are in a way a blessing in sum- 
mer, but upon the comfort of such accommodations 1 need 
not dilate. Fortunately, I had my inevitable cushion, which 
I used as a throttle to the yawning gap beneath. As the 
boat shoved off the superannuated quay, a begrimed awning 
was stretched over the heads of the highest price payers, 
the other poor devils were left to melt in the African tem- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 361 

peratnre. The mercury stood at 95°, and I suffered as 
much in the fervent glow as I had in the caloric of the 
fiimous Centennial summer in Philadelphia. The unfurling 
of the canvas I hailed, at least, as a humane act, and had 
just commenced to feel partly compensated for my suffer- 
ing upon the benches, resembling the tortures of the In- 
quisition, when our only shelter was deliberately removed, 
and in the fierce fire of the tropical afternoon we rode and 
roasted for four hours. Umbrellas and sun-shades were 
vainly raised to screen the passengers from the white flame. 
Protests would have been futile ; suffering was inexorable 
and, indeed, the German gentlemen seemed rather to enjoy, 
or to say the least, they were indifferent to the ordeal, look- 
ing clean and cool in their immaculate linen, while 1 was in 
a glow of perspiration. 

The whole experience was a horror : in the manners of 
the passengers, in the customs of the attendants, in the 
suffocating steamer. How many complaints are scored 
against my countrymen ; j^et, taking them as a mass, where 
do we find greater delicacy of conduct? For example: a 
rather tine-iooking German woman, suffering from the com- 
mon affliction, sprawled herself out at full length regardless 
of her pedal extremities, and slumbered all through the 
fabled shores of the Rhine, and upon the lauded bosom of 
Lake Constance. At every low bridge, and there were 
many, the smoke-pipe was lowered, belching forth a supple- 
mental volcano upon the unoffending, yet much offended, 
heads of the barbecued pilgrims ; and to complete the out- 
rage, a mammoth steer was lugged on deck amongst the 
terrified company. Was there ever an American organiza- 
tion that attempted such a studied outrage upon the travel- 
ling community ? Among the thousands of transatlantic 
tourists is there no one to censure ? Is there not one voice 
raised in protest from our travelling representative men ? 
Why does not Thomas Cook fulminate against the entire 
affair ; his tickets are used upon the line, and his general 
system I cannot too honestly commend ; but in such a case 
he should interfere to protect his own interests, if not to 
secure the comfort of his patrons. 

But, despite these wretched drawbacks, both shores were 
interesting throughout the narrow course of the Rhine. 

There was much that was shabby, ragged, and sterile. 

There was none of the rugged Alpine scenerj'-, and it was 

not until we drifted into Lake Constance with its blue 

waters and storied villas, gleaming white through the lofty 

31 



302 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

forests, that something of an Italian glamour surrounded 
me. 

In Germany 1 The buzz of the broad guttural verna- 
cular, and the demands of custom-house officers to ex- 
amine baggage, told the potent truth. By the treaty of 
Presburg in K'-OS Constance was adjudged to Baden, and 
when Germany was unified in 1866 its own local sovereign, 
together with all the host of little dukes, was swept away 
by the stern iron arm of Bismarck, and now Germany is 
like the United States, one harmonious people. 

We came into the harbor of the Bay of Constance in 
the sweet evening, after our day of damnable basting on 
the water, and as we neared the long curved pier the quaint 
old German city lay calmly l)eautiful in the opaline glory 
of the falling sun on the distant snow peaks. The reflec- 
tion on the mounds of ice, and their colors duplicated 
against the sky, had so blended cloud and mr)uutaiu that 
where the crystal ridges ended and the ethereal dome 
began was utterly indiscernible, until as the sun disappeared 
entirel}', the dark rocks drew their own profile against the 
heavens. 

Early the next morning — Sunday — I was awakened by 
a German military band coming over the bridge, discours- 
ing the march from "Fatinitza;" what with the transcen- 
dent music of the brass instruments, the hush of the new 
day, and the pellucid reverbation of sound as it fell on the 
water, the whole produced an effect I shall never outlive, 
and wherever or whenever I hear the same strains again, 
but one thought will be suggested, one code of events re- 
produced — Constance and its memories. 

The flourish of trumpets and beat of drums meant a 
parade of the Constance fire brigade. So I looked from 
my window in the warm Sabbath and saw in the arid 
streets below a crowd and display ver^^ like our own 
pageants of a similar character, with the one exception of 
the Sunday frolic. Here again we had Paris. I had been 
so long amidst the rigid Catholicism of Italy, and so full 
of the provincialism of Swiss forests, that this saturnalia 
was ver}' like sacrilege. The streets and broad squares 
were alive with military melody and surging populace, but 
shortly after twelve o'clock the revellers retired, sober, 
subdued, and satisfied. There were no Swiss costumes in 
the throng ; the odd dress of the German burgher and his 
homely wife is gradually assuming its authority, as is the 
German silver mark. The Helvetian coins and Italian lira 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 363 

are no more, though the French franc has been with us 
from Paris, it too lias disappeared and we are to learn a new 
money table of marks, pfennigs, florins, thalers, and kreut- 
zers. It seems only yesterday since the French currency 
ruled all ; now the hand of this powerful government over- 
spreads its entire domain ; the broad German mark and 
the ubiquitous soldier vindicate the master intellect that 
dominaites the great state through all its borders. 

The characteristics of the German in America are tyi)i- 
cal of them on their native heath. The Sunday noon being 
fair, the railway carriages were filled by the better classes 
travelling in family parties on little pastoral jaunts, as 
well as by third class the same as the working people. In 
all this broad extent of country there was not a beggar; 
the poorest were clean and decorous ; the higher degrees 
robed in the Parisian fashions ; but there were many 
strange uniforms amongst the peasantr3\ In the district 
of Romberg the women wore black petticoats, scarlet 
bodices, broad-brimmed straw hat, setting around the face 
like a nimbus, ornamented with black or red rosettes ; 
while the men trudged by their sides in black coats lined 
with crimson, and very curious was the effect they pro- 
duced ; as the sun went down on the gray hills they shone 
like fireflies in the deepening shadows. Sunday as it was, 
the fields were full of laborers of both sexes. Have I not 
said enough of the way in which the females are burdened 
here ? With the hauling, and moving, and sawing, and 
being harnessed with dogs and donke3'S, they are so un- 
sexed that all the higher feminine faculties and fascinations 
seem to have faded, leaving the animal nature paramount. 
Yet we have been taught, and still there is an effort afoot 
to sustain the doctrine, that all connection with science, 
philosophy, and logic, energizes the female mind beyond its 
circumscribed limits, — once having drifted into the channel 
of the deeper arts there is an irresistible undercurrent that 
carries her out and out beyond her delicate status, and 
eventually makes her virile, prosaic, and unsentimental. 
But which is to make the most utter devastation with the 
spiritual and carnal beauty of woman, brutish labor or 
mental exercise ? True, the latter may, in time, deprive 
her cheek of some of its exquisite contour, or reduce the 
blooming flesh tints to a tone less dazzling, and the eye 
may be restless instead of soft and lustrous ; but, the light 
of intellect sheds a glorious halo over all personal defi- 
ciencies. 



% 



304 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

Assuredly, this practice of extreme manual labor rnnst 
account for the absence of beauty among the lower orders 
of women in Continental Europe. I scanned the crowds 
coming and going in the cars, and save that they were 
clean, sober, and apparently happy, there was not a comely 
woman in the throng. The men were far better looking as 
a class; their fresh blonde complexions and hair, and erect 
bearing, rather indicated tliat while the women were reared 
to work the men were educated to war. I had ample op- 
portunity to study the German faces and phases, as there 
liad been an industrial exhibition at Triberg in the very 
heart of the Black Forest, and here the peasants came in 
droves from their various little hamlet-homes, where their 
lives are passed in making watches and clocks, to be sent 
far out in the great world of which they know so little. 

Our way through the Black Forest was marked by many 
of the impressive features of the borders of the Mediter- 
ranean or the Alpine districts; first, in the number of 
tunnels, and then in the wild scenery and the herculean 
labor of the forest-workers. Sweeping plains, awful chasms, 
and flinty mountain-ranges, flew by us like shadows across 
a brilliant mirror. Yet it was indeed Germany, dark, 
heavy, impenetrable, and stolid; Germany without excuse 
or qualification. Very like the riotous luxuriance of 
southern French or Italian-Swiss landscape, still lacking 
all of their indescribable charm that is their mysterious 
fascination. The landscape had a Bismarckian outlook. 

The tunnelling of the Black Forest is another revelation 
in railway science. Until I had seen the Italian lines, my 
ideas, like most untra veiled Americans, were that the rail- 
roads of the United State?, especially those across the 
Rocky Mountains, were unparalleled in the difficulties of 
construction, as the}' are known to be unequalled in the 
extent of country they traverse ; but all these preconceived 
notions faded before the over two hundred tunnels of Italy, 
eight consecutive miles under Mont Cenis, and finally by 
the nine continuous miles of St. Gothard, now construct- 
ing jointly' by Italy, Germany, and Switzerland ;' and the 
revelation of the Black Forest, seemed to me a more 
stupendous work than any of the others. Vast mineral 
treasures la}^ in the ridges of these granite hills. Timber, 
coal, and water mingle with incredible varieties of agricul- 
ture and a long catalogue of diversified manufactures. In 
one hundred miles of travel there was a series of tunnels, 
carriage-roads, bridges, and viaducts that followed each 
other in marvellous and rapid succession. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 365 

All through the Black Forest there are thousands of 
archaic relics of every description. Old abbeys, castles, 
and chateaux recall the ancient times when Germany was 
divided among many princes and priests; and as the train 
flashes along its iron ways glimpses may be caught of tan- 
neries, factories, wine-presses, sweet villages, and broad 
fields, which attest the opulence and power of this mag- 
nificent German Empire. Ruins are as frequent as in 
Ital}^, and the appending tales as weird and romantic. The 
Chateau of Ortenburg, which occupies an ancient site of a 
stronghold destro3'ed in the seventeenth century, cannot 
fail to attract the attention of the traveller; the vine-clad 
hills nestled closely about its base, and in the tastefully 
planted grounds where the patter of little feet and the 
shout of happy childish voices, ringing as jubilantly on the 
summer air as if the spot had never been harrowed by 
bloody faction. Wherever we looked there was scenery as 
wild and legends as spectral as those of Greece or Egypt, 
and despite the repulsive guttural dialect of even the best- 
educated German, I do not marvel at the desire of tiie 
English to travel through the Black Forest, with its quaint 
old towns, its simple-hearted people, its impenetrable 
wildernesses, its geological formations, all so much at va- 
riance with the crowded cities, narrow limits, and dissi- 
pated populace of their own boasted kingdom. 

Had landscape and tradition alone been tlie surrounding 
influences 1 might have imagined I was in some far-famed 
land of the gods; but all this fair delusion was dissolved 
by the continued and curious commotion of travel and the 
disagreeable twang and jaw-dislocators of the passengers. 
I picked up these few and then searched a German lexicon 
for the translation : Donseuschingen, an ancient town ; 
Nibelungenlied, a library ; Kilpenstrasse, a street: Ehlen- 
bogenthal, Kinzigthal, Eberstienstrasse, Jugeehweiler, Geic- 
senkopfchen, Gimmeldingen, Guncenbachthal, Schweppen- 
hausen; now these are proper names, and I have not picked 
the most abstruse either. As we go into the body of the 
German speech ordinary terms are apparentl}'^ more incom- 
prehensible ; yet, in this language Luther partly conquered 
the Catholic Church, Goethe and Schiller electrified the 
hemispheres by their verse, and to-day it creates a litera- 
ture of magazines, newspapers, and every variety of books, 
that even puts the pedantic English publisher to the blush. 
Then to heap Ossa on Pelion was the shouting, horn-blow- 
ing, and bell-ringing at every station, and I longed for the 



366 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

English silence and the promptitude of our own system, 
but 1 remembered that England is a very small and com- 
pact kingdom, and that American railways run in straiglit 
lines with comparatively few branches, while the continent 
of liurope is made complex by its various powers, coins, 
dialects, religions, customs, and laws, and that its rail- 
roads receive and discharge every day specimens of nearly 
all the civilized travellers of the age. It is by these sounds 
then that necessary communication is held between officials 
and passengers. My theory was confirmed by the arrival 
of a heavily laden train of cosmopolitan tourists, and their 
amusing conflicts with the German kelners, guards, cab- 
diivers, and hotel porters, when tiiey, speaking but one lan- 
guage and the underlings not more than two, expected all 
their questions to be answered immediately and intelli- 
gently, whether ai)plied in Turkish, Greek, English, Chi- 
nese, Russian, or Japanese, and then flew into the most 
turbulent passion, while the Teuton preserved his stolid 
equanimity. 

At the historic town of Kehl — half an hour from Strass- 
burg — I saw for the first time some of the scars left by the 
war of 1870. This was indeed Germany, or Germany with 
a French heart. Fortifications stretched all about ; as far 
as the eye could reach, in every direction were those great 
circular projecting mounds, and I could easily see traces 
of the advancing columns of the mighty host that swept 
down upon the French battalions. 

Strasburg, the capital of Alsace and German Lorraine, 
the headquarters of the 15th corps of the Teuton forces, is 
German in speech, German in dress, and for two hundred 
years German in the customs of its inhabitants, and yet as 
thoroughly French, heart and soul, as the occupants of the 
Rue de Rivoli or the Faubouro: St. Honor^ in Paris. 

Strasburg is a quaint city of many gables, chimneys, 
red-tiled roofs, and a mingling of French, German, and 
Swiss architecture. I cannot say that any portion of it 
impressed me as being pretty. There are some fine shops 
in the business portion ; but the many platz of the city, 
which were intended as adornment, had a scorched arid 
appearance, and the dust seemed to have penetrated the 
houses ; as was the fact at the hotel, where the cuisine was 
unexcelled and the floors and furniture grimy, with a gene- 
ral aroma in contradiction of the "sweet south breathing 
o'er a bank of violets." There is no time spent in the cul- 
tivation of taste for municipal erubellishmeuts. Structures 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. . 307 

are colored yellow, or red, or blue, while multitudinous 
chimneys start out from the most inconceivable points in 
as great a diversity of shapes as in numbers, and facades 
and eaves are florid with wood carvings. The building 
called the Old House in Strasburg is highly ornate with 
wooden sculptures, capitals and eaves, and gabled roof, 
and very like an exalted edition of a Swiss chalet. It is 
the oldest standing house of the cit}', and though its archi- 
tecture is weird its looks of preservation belie its years. 

One cannot speak of Strasburg and omit its Cathedral 
with its seven hundred years of history, its mingled archi- 
tecture, — Romanesque and Gothic, — its numerous sculp- 
tures, its beautiful interior, and its dizzy tower, which I 
did not ascend ; I am tired crawling up and down crooked 
stairways to meet with nothing but aching limbs and un- 
requited efforts, and peril mj'^ life through the stone fret- 
work of the upper tower. Neither did I look upon the 
embalmed bodies of a German Prince and his daughter, as 
1 have tasted ad nauseam of canonized saints and apotheo- 
sized sinners, dead priests raised to the empyrean, and 
sublimated princes. 

I turned away from all these attractive reminiscences of 
distilled carnality into one of the many crami)ed crooked 
streets, and was surprised at the vast quantity of sabots for 
sale at an humble shop door. They were packed in barrels 
and tubs, and heaped upon the sidewalk, where the peasants 
were purchasing them at three marks (seventy-five cents) 
per pair; one pair wears two years. Heavy, awkward, 
cruel, tortuous inventions, ruder than the rudest l)rogans, 
and confessing, as it were, the extreme destitution of the 
proletaires. The poor toilers who wear these barbarous 
wooden shoes were working on the highways, and difficult 
it was to distinguish the sexes ; they looked like pictures 
of a feudal age. 

The cynosure of Strasburg is the barracks, which con- 
stitutes a series of girdles to the city. One gate after 
another, guarded by grim Teutons, we passed ; one moun- 
tain of earth after another we rode over, until I surely 
thought we must have passed the limitation of fortification, 
and still again and again the strong outworks loomed before 
me in the July twilight.. Thirteen ridges of defence, four 
and five miles from the town, proved not only what the 
French had constructed to debar the Germans, and built 
in vain, but what the Germans have since erected as a pro- 
tection should the French attempt to step in and renew 



308 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the dance which they so impulsively opened eight years 
ago. 

The driver of the hack was a thorough Alsatian, and the 
volubility of his German confirmed the sincerity of his 
French affections. He pointed out the extensive military 
barracks of the various divisions of the German army corps 
now quartered at Strasburg; the captured ammunition 
and valuable bronzes, relics of the conquests of Napoleon 
I. ; designated the portions of the city destroyed by the re- 
sistless Germans in their terrific bombardment for five days 
in August of 18*70. There seemed enough confiscated fire- 
arms and balls to make war on the universe, and as the 
poor fellow looked at these victorious trophies of the con- 
querors, he related his story with all the gestures of an 
excited Parisian, and not with the stolid austerity of the 
victors. He had convinced himself that the French empire 
was tlie only government for the working classes, and I 
was impressed with the contrast between this plebeian Im- 
perialist and the quiet, strong dignity of the oflHcer in 
command of the fortifications, indicative, as it were, of the 
difference between the volatile gasconade of the Alsatian 
and the silent power of the German. 

As we crossed the great bridge of boats over the Rhine 
we were greeted by a swarm of mosquitos that boarded us 
with spileful unanimity, vividly recalling home. We fled 
from the assault in honest terror, but when we re-entered 
the cit}' our myriad enemies had retreated ; they seemed to 
confine themselves to the river precincts., 



LETTER LXIX. 

Noise less (\arlsriihe, grave of Dncal piide ! 

Whose sileiil life is speechless boolis, 
Tlie daily haven of the truant bride. 

Or evening shelter of tlie noisy rooks. 

Anonymous. 

Cablsruhe, July, 1878. 

In passing from the mountains, glaciers, and lakes of 
Switzerland, I miss the congenial climate, wild pictures, 
and quaint dress of the peasant-women, with the white rib- 
bons wound in the plaits of their brown hair ; but in Ger- 
many I have found excessive heat, flies, and mosquitos, 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 369 

and these, if not exactly a compensation for the transcendent 
pleasures of the Alpine Repul)lic, are, at least, sharp re- 
minders of home. 

The journey from Strasburg to Carlsrulie was a short, 
pleasant one, despite the torrid heat. The Grand Duchy 
of Baden is a lovely agricultural region, redolent of flowers 
and trees and the fresh earth, and principally interesting 
by our course through the former gambling town of Baden- 
Baden. Stripped of its glittering robes of sin, its only at- 
tractions are now its healing waters and lovely environs. 
Tiiere was something of a Newport air about the station, 
the fine hotels, the cosy restaurants, and shad}' avenues that 
showed it to be a conservatory of attractions for those of 
full pockets and aristocratic tastes ; yet Baden-Baden has 
only a local population of 11,000, chiefly Boman Catholic. 
Now that the sinners have gone since the Emperor William 
whipped the money-changers from the brilliant temples of 
Baden-Baden, all the sumptuous palaces erected with the 
gamester's money are used by the moral multitudes, who 
seem to have forgotten the pleasure of sin to which they 
were long dedicated. Baden-Baden, with its groves, water- 
falls, theatres, and even churches l)uilt by Mr. Benezet, the 
late king gambler, has a decorous, sedate air, and a fair, 
healthy appearance, where one might find the calm of rustic 
refinement and happiness. The old paradise of hazard 
seems to be given up to what claims to be a newer and 
better generation. 

Carlsruhe, capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden, is rather 
a new town, a fact readily perceived by the modern and 
unsoiled architecture, the outgrowth of the miniature town 
erected by the prince about his hunting-grounds in 1*715, 
since ruled by a succession of local monarchs of one family 
until 1866, when all these petty feudalities were abolished 
by order of Bismarck, after the German armies had defeated 
the Austrians, and the many principalities of German}- lie- 
came united under one sovereign head. It is a dismal siglit 
to see the splendid palaces of the expatriated provincial 
kings standing all around in grim solitude ; silent among 
their own highly cultivated grounds, fountains, and stat- 
uary, while their former possessors, who lived and revelled 
in them, are now passing their days in foreign countries, 
not daring to return to their own. The Grand Duke Fre^i- 
erick William, having married the daughter of Kaiser Wil- 
helm, was not one of the nobles obliged to flee, through 
their allegiance to Austria ; he still reigns in the palace, 



370 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

from which the town radiates fan-shaded. The uprooting 
of the host of smaller empires by which Germany was over- 
run has proven immensely advantageous to the comfort of 
the masses. 

Carlsruhe seems more a town of wealthy burghers and 
students than of manufactures. It is clean, and has a do- 
mestic air not found in any of the Swiss-German cities. It 
is a city of art schools, libraries, and a vast polytechnic, 
with seven hundred students. What laborers I saw seemed 
to be working leisurely' on expensive new houses; there is 
a calm, sleepy, pulseless indolence in the place that invites 
repose, yet the institutions of learning indicate exceptional 
prosperity. These attractions and architectural wonders 
of harmony and style loudly proclaim the difference be- 
tween the simplicity of republics and the extravagance of 
monarchies. The American city passenger cars that pass 
ray window, the happy children on their way to school, with 
their shining, morning faces, — carrying the same descrip- 
tion of satchel we see at home, and whistling the same airs 
we hear there, — and the well-dressed wayfarers recall keenly 
similar sights in Philadelphia. There is less character in 
dress and habits here than in Italy or Switzerland, yet 
human costumes and customs are very much alike every- 
where. Germany differs from France, as Berks County 
differs from Philadelphia ; as, indeed, plain people differ 
from polished ones ; 3'et for all this disparity there is infi- 
nite grandeur in the palaces and parks of the old disman- 
tled nobility, and in the great public edifices they erected 
when they were lords and masters of the multiplicit}' of 
German duchies and towns. 

The estates of the present Grand Duke, that is the palace 
and parks, may be said to occupy the acropolis or central 
point of a district fram which the city diverges in front, 
while the hunting-grounds of Hardwald spread out to the 
rear. The castle and its appendages, — dining, banqueting, 
and reception halls,-^sumptuously ap[)ointed, form a semi- 
circle, with the stables on the east and the court theatre on 
the right, which is still used for public amusements. Here 
is another of those monuments of regal folh'' in a town of 
limited population, with a highly finished exterior; the 
])ediment containing reliefs of Goethe, Schiller, Mozart, 
Beethoven, and Gluck, while the interior is only a repeti- 
tion of all those highly embellished public structures so 
abundant on the Continent. The palace gardens are as 
exquisite in fountains, statues, gay flower-plots, palm- 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 371 

houses, and orangeries as a freshly painted scene in a glow- 
ing play. The flag was flying from the turret to indicate 
the duke's presence; a detachment of German soldiers was 
at the main gate as we entered, and the sovereign's three 
hundred servants at their many vocations, yet with all 
there was a pronounced air of indolence about the palace 
as we sauntered through tiie halls and art gallery enjo3^iug 
the gems of the modern German school. Most of the paint- 
ings are from the pencil of the former and present director 
of the Carlsruhe Academy, though there are some few by 
the older Dutch artists, Jan Steen and Rembrandt. But 
Carlsruhe being an art city with an art quarter, and a 
galax}^ of studios gathered in one corner of the town, pat- 
ronizes and encourages principally the modern school and 
the rising aspirants. Rhenish art is progressing rapidly 
now in all the larger German cities, as we notice in the ar- 
chitecture as well as in painting. 

Military guards were stationed all about the vast palace 
grounds, still there were no signs of activity, no guests, 
and no evidences of a family. At length I came across one 
of the young scions of the noble house playing with a ball 
on a back porch, yet playing in a restrained way, as if he 
had been imbued, by long and thorough instruction, with 
the thought that to surrender himself to his impulses and 
sportive desires would be to degrade his dignity ; and so 
the boy grows up never to know what true, blithe, heedless, 
unambitious childhood is ; childhood with mud and mire, 
patched breeches and tops, scuffed boots and scarred hands. 
The absence of all life and hilarity seemed to be the normal 
condition of the regal home; yet there were other evidences 
of high and luxurious living in the presence of the paper- 
capped French chef and his corps. As the son-in-law of 
the Emperor of Germany, and the descendant of the Grand 
Dukes of Baden, he is perhaps entitled to exceptional ad- 
vantages, but the visit made rather a sad impression. 
Here was the throne-room of the Kaiser, when he came to 
his daughter's palace, with a suite of luxurious apartments, 
yet all deserted and silent, waiting as it were for the visit 
that is not paid but once a 3'^ear. The Duke is fortunate in 
his near relation to the reigning family of the empire, and 
in his fidelity to the German cause which made its many 
principalities one in the struggle twelve years ago. Others 
fled to the side of Austria, or faltered, and suffered in con- 
sequence of their defection, but the Grand Duke of Baden 
remained true, and is novv rewarded by the confidence of 
his king and the love of his people. 



372 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

What with his servants, and hundred carriages, and 
eighty liorses, and contingent of invited guests, the Duke 
must spend every year a large fortune. When we reflect 
liow many such estal)lishments exist throughout the Conti- 
nent and the British Jsles, do we longer doubt there is jus- 
tice in the wail of those who demand a redistribution of 
the accumulated wealth of the world? 



LETTER LXX. 

A blended glory spread around — 
The workshop of imperial mind — 

Goethe has made it holy ground, 
And Luther sacred to mankind. 

Anonymous. 

Frankfort-on-Main, July, 1878. 

Our route from Carlsruhe to Frankfort carried us through 
a country closely connected with the history of American 
independence. And though Heidelberg was the first and 
chief feature, the Grand Duchj'- of Hesse holds a dearer 
place in the heart of my nation. They are both pregnant 
of history. Heidelberg through its illustrious university ; 
Darmstadt, capital of Hesse, has a different claim upon our 
regard: the one has given us great scholars, lights to sci- 
ence and art ; the other sustained an equivocal relation to 
the American struggle for equality and iudependence. 

Heidelberg is no longer an exclusive nursery of savants ; 
it has been modernized by a brisk commerce, and has lost 
much of its precious literary character. The aged dust of 
centuried learning has been swept away b3' the besom of 
trade, the clouds of golden lore have evaporated, mustj^ 
professors have been pushed aside by bustling merchants, 
and the odor of books has been replaced bj' the variety of 
other manufactures. Tiie University, though still enjoying 
an attendance of seven hundred students, is bereft of its 
former prestige. The castle, a monument of the thirteenth 
century, is like Kenilworth, a vast ruin; having been the 
prey of vandal hordes for five hundred years, the victim of 
great fires, and finally the target of the lightning bolt. 
The student reads in it the progress of the feudal ages, and 
in its ivy-hung remains contrasts the eternal rejuvenescence 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 313 

of nature and the instability of the proudest monuments 
erected by human hands to human glory. All the old in- 
fluences seem to have died with the years. The embers 
now only smoulder amongst the ashes of forgotten learning 
and perished royalty. 

Still the vicinity of Heidelberg is thronged by visitors in 
the season, but the busiest places are the well-ordered 
hotels. The sparkling waters and wooded heights and 
green forests are like so many fresh maidens, with all the 
exhilarating fascination of their pastoral home, still untar- 
nished by the glare of metropolitan gaslight and the taint 
of social familiarity, proving the eternal youth of a recrea- 
tive world. 

Now Darmstadt has a population twice the number of 
Heidelberg, and as a natural sequence has quite a munici- 
pal attraction. In its handsome streets, fine squares, noble 
pleasure-grounds, valuable library, galleries of pictures, an- 
tiquities, and coins, a theatre, a palace, and the usual ap- 
purtenances of royal towns, it offers mostly the charm 
sought by tourists in greater cities. The whole neighbor- 
hood is crowded with the remains of the residences of no- 
bility, reviving the harsh features of the olden time, when 
the masses were ruled by a few famous families, who en- 
joyed life without labor, and governed without brains. I 
think Germany was more subject to the feudal S3^stem than 
even France, at least there remain sterner evidences of the 
fact. Can we speak of liberty in a government wiiere the 
land is owned and dominion vested in a few, while the 
people are ground to the earth by military exaction and 
taxation ? 

Modern Germany is a vast improvement on the past. 
Its literature is more powerful, its music more penetrating, 
its statesmanship more influential, its art more self-assert- 
ing, its manufactures more stupendous, than at any former 
period ; and, though still a huge military nation, and a 
great barrack from Bohemia to the North Sea, still a 
mighty force for good, more useful to civilization than Aus- 
tria, more progressive than Russia, and, of course, a resist- 
less opposite to the fading and enervated country of the 
Turk. What struck me as I dwelt upon Darmstadt was 
that the people of Hesse should have been willing to fight 
for their old Grand Duke more than a hundred years ago, 
not for the wages paid to themselves, but to fasten English 
slavery upon the American colonies, and to let those wages 
go into the pockets of their local chiefs, who sold them for 
32 



374 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

SO much a head to the Hanoverian Georges. And yet from 
these very Hessians, and tiie redemptioners that c^me after 
them, our country received the founders of some of our 
most useful families. Pennsylvania was particularly rein- 
forced by this element. 

With such reflections I came into Frankfort, with its 
long and brilliant record as one of the free towns of the 
German confederation. It dates from the time of Charle- 
magne, and the atmosphere of wealth and dignity which 
pervades it is not only an indication of its commercial im- 
portance, but of its long continued financial ascendency 
and political indejiendence. The influences that made 
Frankfort what it is, are patriotism, wealth, industr3', 
energy, and commerce. 

Frankfort is a ro3^al garrison town set in a broad plain 
in the very heart of the Taunus range, that seems to close 
over it, and at the snme time affords a multitude of leafy re- 
treats where the rich Frankforters pass their summers. The 
city proper lies on the right bank of the Main ; on the left 
is its suburb, that seems inhabited by quite another com- 
munity. While the streets in the old portion of the town 
are crooked, narrow, dark, and dirty, those in the newer 
sections are broad, with an expression of perspective, 
flanked by handsome structures, florid with the art of the 
Renaissance, odorous and inviting by the many open 
squares planted with trees, where the winds from the 
bleak heights of the Taunus rustle among the full foliage and 
beautiful shadowed avenues, where the belles petites of the 
city saunter or linger under the great spreading branches, 
closely resembling in face and costume our better-class 
women at home. They are not walking advertisements like 
the fast Frenchwomen or the painted houris of London. 
Removed from the old cramped bywa3's of the city, with 
their storied precincts, antique architecture, and commer- 
cial wharves, is the new Opera House, with its wealth of 
sculpture, columns and capitals, and its fine broad streets 
and extravagant houses, occupied by the uppertendom and 
foreign embassies. It is like a paradise, but it is very far 
away from all that tells us of Guttenburg, Faust, Goethe, 
or the Rothschilds. 

Frankfort has many striking attractions, some of them 
worthy of a far more pretentious city. Next to the new 
Opera House, the Frankforter Hof, a hotel of fine propor- 
tions, is the boldest example. The old streets are alive 
with ancient story and renown. The house in which the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 3*75 

original Rothschilds was born and lived, witli its high steps 
and flat awkward fa9ade, opposite an open platz, wliere the 
square-hipped women sold wilted vegetables in the twilight 
as I rode by, had a tongue for ever}^ stone, telling tales of 
the founder of the great Hebrew house of Mammon ; the 
princes who deal with empires and kings as if they were so 
many figures on the great political chessboard. I was 
shown the house, 148 Judenstrasse, in which the progenitor 
of the gold-coining race lived, in the days when the Jews 
were closed within their own squalid purlieus every evening 
at eight o'clock, and throughout the entire Sabbath and 
holidays were not allowed to venture about the city under 
penalty of a heavy fine. This nefarious custom prevailed 
until the present century in the free city of Frankfort, and 
now the Rothschilds, who once were prisoners in their own 
city, not only wield sovereign power with their millions 
and billions, but occupy their place in parliaments, while 
their sons and daughters are gladly welcomed in marriage 
with the noblest families. Protestant sentiments hold do- 
minion in Frankfort, but the great number of resident He- 
brews is readily seen by a visit to any of the public resorts, 
where they compose the better part of the attendance. 
This proscribed race now rank amongst the best musicians, 
authors, painters, orators, statesmen, historians, scientists, 
and philosophers, not only in these Teutonic districts, but 
all over Europe. 

In this same tumble-down, unswept, and ungarnished 
quarter are mementos of greater ones than the lordly 
mf)ney-changers. Opposite the northeast corner of the old 
cathedral stands an archaic slate-covered house, bearing a 
grotesque marble eflSgy and a Latin inscription upon its face. 
From a window in this antique structure the celebrated re- 
ligious reformer addressed the multitudes on his way to 
Worms, and from the window still looks the face of Martin 
Luther in all its quaint and ludicrous stoniness. The house 
where the poet Goethe was born is more of an object of at- 
traction than the superb colossal monument, with its alle- 
gorical reliefs and its chaste illustrations of his poems, to his 
glory, in the platz adjoining the Rossmarket, where is the 
massive cenotaph of Guttenberg, holding his types and sur- 
rounded by statues of other masters of the art preservative 
of all arts. Here then were the four monarchs of their day 
and time; Rothschilds, the father of the money kings ; Lu- 
ther, father of Protestant reform ; Goethe, the father of 
poetic philosophy ; and Guttenberg, the inventor of the 
art of printing. 



376 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

These monuments and their pendent historical incidents 
suggested many pleasant reflections, but my visit to the 
Romerl)erg and its market-place in front, and its collection 
of wretched portraits in the kaisersaUe, was a dismal dis- 
enchantment. I threaded my way through many dirty 
streets until T came to a great open, dust}'', rusty, moth- 
eaten square and an equally decaying temple, which had 
lofty gables and broad doorways standing open. I entered 
the gaping vestibule or arcades, — all damp and dark and 
grimy. At first I thought it the rendezvous of rats, and 
imagined lizards and loathsome fnsects playing in and out 
the chinks of the pavement and walls after nightfall. I 
ascended a broad stair to my right and entered the kaii^er- 
salle or gallery of emperors, on the first floor. The por- 
traits from the day of Charlemagne are without exception 
bad, yet precious to the mind, as every individual who en- 
tered that saloon was watched by two German women as if 
each was a famous })rofessional thief. No one was allowed 
to make his exit until he had contributed somethinfj to tlie 
support of the sentinels of these travesties of the early 
German rulers. The strategy was onlj^ another version of 
the spider and the fly story. The Romerberg is tiie mar- 
ket place of every public rejoicing, and another of the 
former prescribed precincts of the Jews. 

But there is one real work of art here, the inspiration of 
genius, — the group of " Ariadne on the Panther." This 
cliaste and artistic fancy of Danneker is shown in an alcove 
of Mr. Bethman's museum. That gentleman purchased it 
for the sum of twenty thousand florins, and preserves it and 
several lesser casts and carvings in an addition to his own 
residence. The crimson drapery of the tabernacle was 
drawn aside by an old servant of the house, and the famous 
group appeared like a frozen poem in a sort of transcendent 
golden light, or fata morgana,, that enveloped it and floated 
about it, 3^et every line and curve of the marble shone as 
distinctly as if it were cut in the strange amber glare. It 
had all the glow of life, and as the figure revolved upon the 
pivot of the pediment 1 imagined I could see the sinews of 
the limbs contract and relax, and the flesh quiver. The 
easy and mobile pose of the figure, tiie graceful lines, the 
almost sentient stone, the double poetry of life and beauty, 
the varied phases of expression, prove not alone the idealism 
of ihe artist, but the growing influence of his work. It has 
the great and enduring virtue that even the most celebrated 
conceptions of our modern artists lack, — it is not too large 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. STT 

for a perfect type of womanhood. The limbs of the divinity 
are rather small and round, with that expression of luscious 
pliancy that we expect as the chief charm of the ideal 
woman. We never find the old marbles of the Greeks with 
rigidly curved limbs and a nether jaw that proclaims deter- 
mination of purpose. Praxiteles and Phidias never made 
their Venuses and Junos after the pattern of an Amazon. 
The Goddess of Love, or the Angel Purity, the muses of 
Art and Music, were not created to fight wars and harrow 
up vast fields of agriculture. We must come to the later 
works to find conceptions of herculean strength and limbs 
that seem to have been developed in a calisthenic school. 



LETTER LXXI. 

The gambler with his dice has fled, 

And pure and sweet now lies the land, 
Where sweetest flowers their fragrance shed, 

And grape vines wreathe in gold and purple band. 

Anonymous. 

Wbisbaden, July, 1878. 

Here is another exquisite offspring of the gaming sys- 
tem. A fashionable German spa, a finished watering- 
place, a modern cluster of luxurious homes and lazy re- 
sorts, with none of the soft shadows of a pastoral retreat 
and with none of the gray tone that comes with age. A 
city that has sprung up since the era of electricity and 
sleam ; that looks as if it had l)een expressly constructed 
to please the tastes of the meretricious element that took 
possession of it before the fraternity of hazard was expelled 
from the kingdom, and as if its cost had been paid for out 
of their pockets. And though there is no bustle in the 
streets, everything looks new and garnished like a decora- 
tion for a holiday. Every one passes by with an invalid or 
indolent air, and many of the men on the streets have the 
easy, audacious, well-dressed, well-fed look of gamblers ; 
such men as we have all seen at great stations and hotels; 
loungers, with an inert, supine expression ; grand in flashing 
diamonds, glazed shirt-fronts, flashy neckerchiefs, hair oiled, 
and arranged after the latest tonsorial st3de, exquisitely 
trimmed finger-tips, and as they pass, the atmosphere is 

32* 



378 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

rife with the subtleties of frangipanni, ylangylang, or 
musk. 

There are great hotels, parks where the ladies sun them- 
selves after thermal baths, and sweet, secluded walks over 
an iron portico to the Trinkhalle, and Cursaal grounds 
glowing in flowering parterres, that are apt to chase away 
all morbid or immoral reflections ; yet 1 cannot help the 
conviction that there is still a substratum of the old social 
composite underlying the present quiet affectation of con- 
valescence. 

Still there are many beautiful villas bordering the town, 
and excursions to the adjacent heights of Sonnenberg, 
Neroberg, and the Platte; or to the sanitary baths and 
waters of Schlangenbad and Schwalbach, both lying in 
green valle^^s noted for their medicinal and curative pro- 
perties. The air at all of these health spas is clear and in- 
vigorating, though situated in dales richly wooded; and 
the bridle and carriage paths of the mountains afford rare 
views of the Rhine and Main, and the surrounding countr}^, 
as we rise and fall with the undulations of the road ; now 
in a narrow valley with comfort and plenty about us; and 
then on the hilltop, where the vines are trained to the sum- 
mit, and the road cut through the fruitful vineyard, held at 
figures that would appear enough to purchase the rich acres 
tliemselves. 

The ride from Frankfort to Wiesbaden is a short jour- 
ney of an hour and a quarter, through a district literally 
bursting with the varied wealth of a bounteous and bounti- 
ful nature. The railway is one of the oldest in Germany, 
and its branches are numerous, reaching many historic 
towns and Roman settlements in the time of tiie Caesars. 
A good story is afloat of General and Mrs. Grant while at 
Homberg, the most jjopular watering-place in tlie Rhine- 
land. There are many remains of the Roman occupation 
before the Christian era; on a wooded height about one 
and three-fourths miles from the resort there is what once 
w^as an arcliaic cemetery. A number of tombs were ex- 
cavated in the presence of the ex President, and the urns 
containing the human ashes found in excellent preserva- 
tion ; the Roman coin placed on the lid of the burial vase 
according to Pagan custom, to pass the body of the de- 
ceased over the river Styx, still remained, and as the ex- 
humer handed it to General Grant, he quietly remarked to 
his friend. General Badeau, " They are evidently not tak- 
ins: toll down there now." 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 379 

JVTany amusing paragraphs are told of the soldier-Presi- 
dent's visit to Europe. He has been highly and constantly 
honored. Kings, courts, parliaments, and great communi- 
ties have been spontaneous in their tributes, yet through 
them all he has remained the same unaffected and unobtru- 
sive republican. His reticence has been at times painful 
in the midst of noisy speeches, high-flown compliments, and 
the blaz(m of pageantry. Jt has even given offence to 
those who expected some demonstration in return for 
their loud welcome. 

In passing from the red wines of Southern France and 
Italy to the white wines of the Rhine and Moselle, there is 
as great a difference in the growth and training of the 
vines as there is in the juice they yield. \n the Hock- 
heimer district, where the celebrated sparkling hock is 
manufactured, the vine is grown on tall arbors more closely 
resembling the American plant; and so valuable is this par- 
ticular species that when the railroad was surve3ed through 
the section, the contractors agreed to pay over two dollars 
and a quarter for each vine removed or destroyed during 
the necessary excavations. This was over forty years 
ago ; to-day the wine ranks among the finest growths of tiie 
Khine. So Wiesbaden is a prosperous, elegant town, and 
the centre of a region of surpassing fertility and loveliness. 
The climate is more perfect — that is, more healthful — than 
the southern countries, but it has nothing of the feverisli, 
intoxicating influence of the regions bordering the Medi- 
terranean and Ionian waters. Here we have an atmos- 
jjhere that energizes and nerves the natives to labor ; south, 
the world-famed salubrity enervates and renders slothful 
not only the sons of the soil but all who linger within its 
shadow. 

Here orchards, vineyards, and mineral springs are the 
gifts of generous nature, while wide and sweeping roads, 
white and glittering palaces, and ranks of gigantic broad- 
spread trees encircling green squares, radiant flower- 
patches, and silver}'' fountains are the achievements of 
man. 

Everj'where one may turn in Wiesbaden there is lavish 
proof of the gambler's liberality. Before the Emperor Wil- 
liam closed them out they had already beautified the little 
German resort in many ways, and the monuments of their 
affluence are not only preserved, but supplemented by the 
city with new splendors. 

In tiie grand hall of the Cursaal there are instrumental 



380 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

concerts every Friday, and dancing every Saturday. But 
the park adjoining the long building is a much more popu- 
lar rendezvous than the conversation hall. I walked among 
its gay parterres in the darkness of night, with nothing but 
the groups of lamps along the lake margin and the twink- 
ling stars overhead to light up the glistening waters, where 
the white swans paddled and floated like animated snow- 
d lifts, and the complete combinations of floriculture rose 
in mounds of bloom. The skill displayed in weaving the 
flowers by the scientific process of sowing the seed in par- 
ticular devices has been reduced to the elegance of written 
characters; and as I passed away from the perfumed alleys 
the strains of the delicious music in the adjacent building 
came floating through the pines and dropped into the 
water like the melodious tinkle of liquid bells. I crossed 
the way, and under the shadow of the laurel and oleander, 
in large green tubs that stand close to the windows of the 
great hotels, I watched the pedestrians. Where were they 
all going ? Very few females, but battalions of male strag- 
glers fashioned after the model I have already presented. 

Through a beautiful valley in the full flush of the summer 
afternoon I sought the Greek chapel. It is midway up tiie 
Neroberg, and we rode through vineyards, with here and 
there a little group of white cottages, like a flock of 
doves nestled in a dale between the hills, making a minia- 
ture world and community of its own. Then upon the 
summit of an elevation, over which the ripe fruit clambered 
in riotous confusion, stood a spacious stone mansion, the 
home of the princely owner of the rich lands it overlooked. 
It was very regal and exclusive in its majestic solitude, 
but it seemed cold and isolated at its height, while the 
cluster of humble homes below shone in the warmth of 
happy domesticity. 

The chapel, erected by theDuke of Nassau in commemora- 
tion of his Muscovite wife, containing her mausoleum, 
stands alone upon a smoothly-shaven mound. In the form 
of a Greek cross, it is surmounted by five mosque domes or 
minaret towers, sparkling in golden contrast to the pallid 
facade. The interior is dazzling with decorations and the 
rich stuflfs of White Russia. The floors, walls, and ceilings 
of pure white marble glow in stained glass and precious 
stones, enamelled screens from the native home of the 
duchess, and in a recess reclines the full-length monumen- 
tal figure of the princess herself. Upon either side of the 
sarcophagus are statuettes of the twelve apostles, and at 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 381 

the corners sit tlie holy quartette, Faith, Hope, Charity, 
and Immortality; in the circle above soar angels, while 
between the arches stand the propliets and evangelists, — 
a costly, chaste, and highly suggestive combination of 
royal wealth and taste, and a fitting tribute to the pure 
daughter of the house of Romanoflf. Yet the Duke married 
again and espoused the cause of Austria in 1866, and is 
now a fugitive in a foreign land, though still esteemed by 
the community to which he left a perennial source of profit 
in the souvenir to his dead spouse. 



LETTER LXXII. 

" I saw the blue Rhine sweep along — I heard, or seemed to hear, 
The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear, 
And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill, 
The echoing chorus sounded through the evening calm and still." 

Caroline Norton. 

Cologne, August, 1878. 

The sweetest memory I have of Wiesbaden is the odor- 
ous path over which we rode to Biebrich-on-the-Rliine. 
Although the first of August the air was as fresh and ex- 
hilarating as the last of September; for in these conser- 
vative countries we have all the glorious refocillating tone 
of autumn while our American friends are languishing in 
the lassitude of the so-called dog-days. With our baggage 
in a comfortable carriage we posted across a level highway, 
flanked by full-leaved chestnut trees, heavy with half- 
ripened fruit The scene was not so picturesque and 
graceful as the French, nor so glowing and spirituelle as 
the Italian, nor so wild as the Swiss, but every rood was 
marked by the same German care and thrift. The ride 
was not long enough to prove tedious, and, when I reached 
the steamer station at Biebrich, I was eager to obtain my 
introduction to the much-sung stream of poets and trouba- 
dours. Mounting the upper deck of the "Merkins," that 
came puflSng and propelling its huge and ungainly carcass 
through the dark waters, I was brought face to face w'ith 
another magnificent estate of the Grand Duke of Nassau. 

The deserted palace, and vast demesne stretching along 
the river shore, and extending far back into farm-lands and 



382 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

forests, is another proof that, until the consolidation of 
Germany, he was the good shepherd of all this district ; he 
gave much and when expatriated he left much, as if to 
show that even in his banishment he desired to be remem- 
bered in his solitary gardens and vacant palaces. The 
terraces of the long barracks of buildings overlook the 
Rhine, while for a mile rearward a well-kept park grows 
into a mammoth picture, with its majestic timber and 
dense foliage lighted up by glowing flower-beds, where 
smooth walks and drives dissect well-shaven lawns, mur- 
murous with the silver harmony of cascades and fountains, 
and sparkling with the glisten of marbles. And these, 
with the interior beauties of the mansion, are left alone to 
gladden the senses of strangers, in care of the servants and 
workmen retained by the luxurious exile. 

The day, that had been cool and rayless as we rode 
through the sweet chestnut groves, had settled into a dull, 
disagreeable drizzle as we coursed up the Rhine. Perhaps 
the dismal atmosphere exercised a pronounced influence in 
disenchanting me with the historied water; or, perha])s, 
my expectations had swollen unreasonably with the ebulli- 
tion of my fancy; but the afternoon was -bad, the waters 
black, and the expected beauty vanished. I looked in vain 
for the sapphire blue in the stream over which I sailed; 
but, alas ! 1 discovered no tone or shade that I might ethe- 
realize in even my wildest flights of imagination. The 
waters were not only dark with storm, but had a gray and 
grimy tone, as if full of alluvium, or a mountain deposit 
constantly drifting down from the Swiss Alps, borne in the 
torrents from St. Gothard's, or carried in the wake of the 
Riieinwald glaciers. 

There is no beauty of flow nor majesty of volume to lend 
dignity to the stream. Strip it of its legends, its ruins 
standing on every side like grim skeletons of faded glory, 
its unequalled vines of Rheingau, its forests of Neiderwald, 
its castled crags of Drachenfels, and we would have nothing 
but a very contracted, sluggish current, crawling like a 
torpid serpent through a country really tropical in its pro- 
fuse growth of the grape. The river seems as if it had 
drunk itself stupid with the juice of the seductive vine. 

The course of the iron road follows the water's edge on 
either side ; now and then we see the great mechanical fiery 
horse vanish into wiiat I at first supposed to be the remains 
of some regal home of the centuries, — of wiiich only a Gothic 
arch and a few towers remained, — and, being lost to us for 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 383 

a few seconds, emerge on the opposite side, and after pass- 
ing a succession of these pretty cathedral domes and tur- 
rets, I discovered they were the entriances and exits to the 
tunnels through mountains jutting into the water. They 
are fresh and ornate with a vast deal of architecture, and 
seem a fitting place of worship for the limited population 
of the wine district. One little town after another studs 
the shore like white dots upon a green and golden snrface ; 
— hamlets of 600 to 1000 vine-growers and wine-makers. Yet 
the homes of the humble and the continuity of the small 
tracts in which the precious and costly Rhine wine is grown, 
seemed scarcely more frequent than the great estates of the 
German nobility, — alternately decaying and blossoming. 

The boats are pleasant, — when I say pleasant, I do not 
mean that they approach the fresh-water steamers of Amer- 
ica, but an improvement on the transport that brought me 
from Schaffhausen to Constance. The travellers of the 
best class Germans, largely interwoven with foreign tour- 
ists, were as well dressed, polite and deferential as the 
French, but the absence of the Gallic gabble and the all- 
pervading guttural Teuton spoken by cultivated women 
and men proclaims the perponderance of the classic German 
domination at Berlin, and the bold self-assertion of the 
German race. 

The ride upon the Rhine was a revelation and a peren- 
nial fount of study, meditation, and speculation ; from the 
chief lower erabarkature at Mayence to Cologne it is crowd- 
ed with incident and history and novelty to the stranger, 
and while my mind wandered and w^ondered over each con- 
secutive event, the Germans between whom 1 was mortised 
were indifferent to their own traditions. Though I had 
read much of the mystic origin of the Rhine, and of its 
equally abstruse termination, — as no drop empties into the 
sea, — of its varied and rich products, and of its feudal 
castles and battlements, yet 1 had the craving curiosity for 
a more intimate knowledge of the historic locale. 

The slopes of Johannisberger and Steinberger are small 
stretches, where the vines are grown upon terraced rocks 
and tended principally by monks ; and the vineyards over- 
looked by the gray and rugged towers of the castles. Each 
small town has its special vine territory, but these two 
are the rival deities of the bacchanalian area. The old fort, 
'• Cat," and the Mouse Tower, may be interesting objects 
to the average traveller, but this marvellous wine-yielding 
country can never lose point to the student. 



384 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

The linfht white wines of the vicinasre are the beveraofe, 
and while many have gained po[)ularity from their intrin- 
sic value, many owe much of their exalted reputation to 
their name. The Leibfraumilch, a Rhenish-Hessen wine, 
sells here for figures it no more commands by its superior- 
ity of quality alone than the Lachryma Christi of Italy. 
The Moselle wines, — and the sparkling ones are really fine, 
— are chiefl}^ cultivated among the slate rocks. Cham- 
l)agne is a rare product of the Rhine, though there is a 
mammoth establishment in the environs of Wiesbaden. 
Sparkling wines are grown at Mayence, Hockheim, Rude- 
sheim, Coblentz, and, indeed, in all the wine country, but 
the vintages are always small, and must of necessity be 
very far below the quantity that floods the different countries 
and is consumed under the original label sold here. 

But this universal and plenary adaptation of the grape- 
juice has a beneficial effect upon the community. The 
light French, German, and Italian wines are procured 
for a trifle by the lower classes in their districts; they in- 
vigorate, but do not inebriate, and in these countries there 
is little or no intoxication. Brandy is rare wherever wine 
is the growth of the neighborhood, and even beer is reject- 
ed by the laboring classes. Those two busy Bs, that have 
wrought so much havoc and anguish in Eno;land and at 
home, are here unable to work their mischief side-by-side 
with the pure juice of the fruit, distilled from the fair fields 
of the Rhine, the Moselle, the Rhone, and the classic 
streams of Illyria. The climate is so conservative and 
healthful, tlie inhabitants so moderate, industrious, and 
frugal, that the wild emotions engendered bj' brandy, or 
the phlegmatic indolence born of beer, find no more con- 
stituency here than riotous saturnalias found among the 
Arcadians. 

Tiie Rhine abounds in pleasant retreats and villas of 
wealthy foreigners, old as the Mediterranean and the Alpine 
lakes. Dismantled castles and ruined fortresses are not 
alone the features of the celebrated stream ; and had I 
never heard through poet or author or historian of the 
trascendent country, with its gentle vales lying between 
projecting rocks and fierce heights, the literature sold upon 
the boat and at the stations, as profuse as the tracts with 
which the passengers are bombarded en route to Monte 
Carlo, would have told me the most flattering tales of the 
enchanted region. Byron, Bulwer, and the Hon. Mrs. 
Norton are still conspicuous and popular. Here arc the 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 385 

castles, and here the poets and poems glorifj^ing the castles, 
each with its history, and each with its romance, each in 
the midst of a valuable region, each with its neighborhood 
nobility, and all photographed ad nauseam. 

We came into Coblentz just as the Catholic church bells 
were chiming six, and in the sweet evening the melody fell 
over the water and rang through the hills as harmoniouslj- 
as it had upon the holy lakes of Italy. At the confluence 
of the Rhine and Moselle, backed by hedging vineyards 
mountainward, the little Romish town lies in a triangular 
basin. Before me, on the opposite bank of the river, rose 
the massive and formidable fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. 
Rock upon rock was piled in the air, and fortification 
upon fortification reared their gray watches higher and 
higher, until mountain and stronghold seemed to have 
been created at one birth. I looked at the mighty bul- 
warks, and I looked at the guard, and I saw nothing else 
until the misty veil of twilight wrapped all nature in clouds. 

Four miles from Coblentz, on a summit above the ham- 
let of Capellen, rise the spires and towers of Stolzenfels, 
palace of the Empress Augusta. On a beautiful Sabbath I 
rode over hill and dale; through vine arbors and golden 
wheat-fields; over broad table-lands, where not even car- 
riage-wheels nor horses' hoofs had marked a path ; over 
stretches of emerald herbage and by the rugged mountain- 
base, higher and further until the Rhine and Moselle lay 
sparkling beds of crystal below, while we were within the 
wall of the Fort Kaiser Alexander, where the guards were 
taking their humble meal of porridge, or washing their 
white jackets upon the rough stones. The village of Cap- 
pellen is a straight row of houses facing the railway. The 
ascent of Stolzenfels is made from here either on foot 
or "mit de donkeys," as the guard in charge informed us. 
The donkej^s are miserable, browbeaten little creatures, 
decked as gayly as Alpine shepherdesses, and trot over the 
precipitous paths on their spindle-legs regardless of sharp 
corners, deep gorges, or perilous ledges. It does not re- 
quire any particular equestrian talent to ride one of these 
tasselled and rosetted animals, as a neat little chair is 
fastened to his back for the tourist, and a peasant boy, to 
tickle the creature into wakefulness, acts as guide. The 
path was good, and as it was a gradual ascent of 810 feet 
above the Rhine I confidently depended upon Shank's mare. 
The pull was arduous, but I managed to keep pace with 
the visitors who preferred the mules. At last the plateau 
33 



386 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

crowned by the machicolaterl battlements, and the honiy 
chapel steeples, was reached, and the doors opened unto us 
b}^ the lady castellan; the baffled bullet of JSobling had 
prevented the royal family from occupying their summer 
home, so the brilliant chateau w^as left in the hands of the 
seneschals. 

1 entered a large vestibule, and in one corner saw twenty 
or more pairs of white felt moccasins, which each of the 
visitors was requested to don before entering the polished 
floors of parquetry in the several banquet and reception 
saloons. There are many historic suits of armor, the hal- 
V)erds and matchlocks of a hundred kings, and paintings by 
all the best Lowland artists. There are six memorial pic- 
tnres relative to chivalry in the smaller salon, that could 
not but impress the stranger; they are of the Rhenish 
school, yet aglow with all the dazzling radiance of Rubens; 
Faith, illustrated by Godfrey de Bouillon at the Holy Sep- 
ulchre; Justice, typified by Rudolph of Hapsburg sitting in 
judgment on robber knights; Poetry, troubadours with 
Philip of Swabia and his queen on a pleasure excursion on 
the Rhine; Love, the Emperor Frederick welcoming his 
bride; Loyalty, Hermann von Siebeneichen sacrificing his 
life to save Frederick Barbarossa ; Bravery, blind King 
John of Bohemia at the battle of Crecy ; but, above all 
these, there is one, a fresco in the chapel, of Adam and Eve 
whose memory, like the wrinkles of care, will grow deeper 
with the years. 

Stolzenfels overlooks the termination of the most roman- 
tic and contracted valley of the Rhine, and all the beauty 
of the section seems concentred at its feet and about its 
top. Churches stand at the marriage of the waters; pil- 
grim shrines upon rock-bound summits: quondam convents 
upon isolated islands ; and back of all, beyond all, and above 
all, the impenetrable Ehrenbreitstein frowning; formidable 
in its proportions, sublime in its majesty. 

The palace of the regal pair in the city is bowered in 
groves and gardens, and surrounded in the flowery walks 
thrown open to the people. Like most of the ro3'^al homes 
it is maintained in silent and vacant grandeur. Still though 
the monarchs cannot occupy their many castles, the many 
pleasant tales of the benevolence of the empress to her sub- 
jects somewhat temper the mad extravagance of this opu- 
lent and aristocratic system. 

Upon the bridge of boats leading to the portals of 
Ehrenbreitstein 1 waited in the midday sun half an 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 38Y 

lioiir while a succession of craft drifted up and down the 
stream ; the ascent is tedious, and though tiie grim fortress 
evokes a mingling of admiration and awe, it is sure to be- 
come tiresome to the American because of the omnipres- 
ence of military power. A fee for entrance goes to the 
treasury of the disabled veterans, and after passing an os- 
tentatious succession of bars and barricades, and foolisli 
fanfaronade, we made the ascent of the vantage-ground, 
where the young soldiers were drilling on the topmost 
parade, while others were beating their clotiiing clean on 
the crude stones near the pumps ; Sunday seems to be 
wash-day in the garrisons. These poor fellows go tiirough 
the dismal monoton^^ of their slavery to the Emperor, and 
are remunerated with three or five cents a day for their 
services ; while of such subjects as do not enter the 
army, the males are obliged to pay a tax of twelve dol- 
lars a year, and the females three. Well may we call our 
country free, and well may the poor of foreign nations hail 
it as a salvation wiiere we have no great army to eat away 
the substance of the public weal, no tremendous forts 
guarded by gangs of martial serfs, and no tax upon the 
working classes, who cannot, either from their condition or 
their sex, become soldiers. View Ehrenbreitstein from the 
lower opposite onlj^ ; from that point it inspires every lofty 
sentiment ; we see only what is grand and fascinating be- 
cause seemingly unattainable, and like one of the enchanted 
watch-towers of a fairy tale that might only be approacheil 
by supernatural aid ; but having scaled its height and 
viewed its military discipline, there is a poison of impera- 
tive rule making the whole atmosphere a pestilence. 

Waiting for the boat to go to Cologne, I studied a group 
of peasants on the quay. In all these countries the lower 
classes adhere to the dress of their station with apparent 
pride. Whether it be a white riblx)n twisted in their hair, 
a blue blouse, a silver clasp in their plaits, or a blue ker- 
chief about their necks, it is universally and happily adopted 
by the same damsel who would in America ape her mis- 
tress's train, and puffs, and bangles, and bang, three weeks 
after stepping from the emigrant ship. 

From Coblentz to Cologne I found the country flatter 
and less interesting than the first part of my Rhine jour- 
ney, and marked by a strange geological formation of pum- 
ice-stone. Many of the towns are attractive, but the nearer 
one draws to Cologne the more evident becomes the fiict 
that you are passing from the land of the vine. Soon after 



388 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

leaving Coblentz, the seven mountains, Drachenfels, and 
other points made familiar by pen and pencil, showed them- 
selves in undisputed position. Great crowds came on the 
steamer from their summer holiday, again presenting to 
view the better classes of Germany. Coming from their 
day's outing as they were, there was no sign of dissipation, 
nor the slightest degree of excess ; many ladies bore the 
mark of high distinction, with all the grace of quiet dignity, 
which is ever more attractive than idle volubilit3^ 

As we approached Bonn, the university town, the trade of 
the country seemed to be rather in slate and a peculiar white 
stone, partaking of the volcanic character of the region, and 
u.-sed largely for building purposes. In the twilight this inter- 
esting city seemed much more populous than represented. 
Near all these German towns there are old palaces, monu- 
ments, extinct mines, and any number of ecclesiastical 
remains. Bonn was one of the first Roman fortresses, and 
is spoken of by Tacitus, and in its ancient minster several 
of its early German kings were crowned. In science, art, 
classical learning, and in general acquirement, this collegi- 
ate city maintains a high celebrity. It has recently be- 
come a favorite residence of the English, and now, lighted 
by a young moon, the steamer, after depositing most of 
her passengers, glided on to Cologne. 



LETTER LXXIII. 

" As I am rhymer, 
And now, at least, a merry one, 

Mr. Munis Rudisheimer 
And the church of St. Geryon, 
Are the two things alone, 
That deserve to be known, 
In the body- and soul-stinking town of Cologne," 

Coleridge. 

Cologne, August, 1878. 

Far off I saw the many lights of a great town, casting 
their yellow glare out upon the water, and defining clearly 
the contour of the semicircular city, — mirroring it against 
the fervent sky and dark-purple water as it never could 
have appeared to me had 1 not entered it by river and 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 389 

by night. From its shore it seemed a wild, rollicking 
place, and as 1 stepped upon its wharf — Sunday though it 
was — my conjectures were confirmed ; the town was in 
general carnival. The riotous clatter of the streets seemed 
as if the entire population and its 14,000 troops in garrison 
were indulging in fierce saturnalia. Across the Rhine I 
heard the noisy brass band, and saw the moving figures in 
the jocund booths through the glittering lamps, while from 
the adjacent honses floated the hoarse voices of dissipated 
men and the shrill shrieks of excited women, making night 
hideous and our route a terror. In the military town the 
wildest license prevailed. The quarter about the wharves, 
through which we passed, was evidently infected by the 
most degenerate part of the community, judging by the fra- 
cas^ and the soldiers that should have preserved order only 
added trumpet-tongued obscenity to the fray. It impressed 
one rather as a city just invaded by a conquering host, 
and in the hands of pillagers, than a quiet Grerman town 
whose commerce had faded, where military rule reigns 
supreme. Nor was it any better when we at last reached 
the Hotel du Nord, a magnificent stone structure, with 
towering portals, stone corridors and stairways like a 
palace, and a busy court, with an odd boisterous medley of 
soldiers, servants, tourists going and coming, and tiie con- 
fusion of travel, like a world on wheels. Here I had gotten 
into another pandemonium of anarch}^ and tempest ; a 
whirlpool, where symmetry and system were utterly 
iijnored. 

The Hotel du Nord is to Cologne what the Fifth Ave- 
nue is to New York, but the difference is as widespread as 
a cathedral to a madiiouse. Porters in the act ol precipi- 
tating huge burdens upon travellers, waiters rushing to 
and fro, and the manager screaming in a jargon of tongues, 
whilst in the midst of the imbroglio stands the startled 
guest tired and tossed and stunned. The architecture of 
the hotel is fresh and florid, seeming a work of the period 
when Cologne was in the flush of enthusiasm for Gothic 
art; while the upholstering decorations of the best cham- 
bers are as beautiful and expensive as palace adornments. 
But witii all this prodigality and culture of art there was 
the plebeian tone that comes with indecorum, and the mer- 
cenary management of a proprietor who a few years ago 
was head-waiter, and who now " runs" it, not for the com- 
fort of his guests but to fill his own coffers. The house 
crowds the profits of a year into three months, and hence 

38* 



390 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the wild caravnnsera of Cologne. Its motto is: rapidity 
of action ; the result : inattention, disorder, ill-manners, 
and interminable delay. The riotous scene at table d^hote 
yesterday was a subject for Hogarth, and the ludicrous 
opposite to the graceful courtesy and refined plenty of 
the splendid establishment, the Cavour in Milan. There 
is a classic elegance pervading Northern Italy and the 
shores of Southern France met in no other Continental 
country. Be it only a flagon of Vesuvio or Capri for fifty 
centimes, a kilo of black bread, a blade of garlic, or a wafer 
of Bologna sausage, taken at the base of the volcano, or in 
the stableyard of a roadside inn of the Appian Way, tliere 
is an attic grace in the refined poverty, a mystic picturesque- 
ness in the surroundings, which even the impurity and de- 
generacy of the lower classes of Ital}'- cannot dispel, 
'i'here is a certain luscious, luxurious ease and elegance 
never attained or approached by the same orders in Ger- 
many, where frolic is vulgar and poverty otfensive. 

1 can look from my window at the interminable review 
of military in the great square of the Cathedral, and then 
watch the long line of plumed troops clatter over the iron 
bridge and dissolve amongst the forests and mountains 
across the Rhine. All day there are soldiers; and every- 
where soldiers ; now a great revolving train of artillery that 
shakes the earth like an earthquake, then a calvacade of 
horsemen, their iron hoofs clattering over the stones, then 
solid columns of infantry surging by; and all for what? 
Why this pestilential presence of war in aland of peaceand 
])lenty ? And as 1 queried the kellner answered, " This 
martial monster is only to tax the poor, to feed royalty, to 
chill our hearts, to drive us from our Fatherland," and as 
he spoke his face glowed and his voice rang with hatred of 
the dark shadow of the omnipresent soldier. The gloomy 
raven saddens and maddens them and makes them an in- 
different and dissatisfied people. 

The Cathedral at Cologne is the offspring of Gothic art 
in the Middle Ages, which having passed through six cen- 
turies of gestation, is still incomplete. It is called the 
most magnificent edifice in the world ; yet the architecture 
is not so complicated, nor has it the graceful airiness of the 
superb Dom at Milan, that seems a creation of the purest 
snow. It is the prime attraction, but its interior is most 
unclean. Having passed through many ages and survived 
revolutions it has grown old in its unfinished state. Of 
course, in all these years it has had a number of architects, 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 391 

but the scliools and periods have not been mixed, although 
the rounded windows and doors, the groined and vaulted 
roofs, and the arch-connected pillars of the purely Roman- 
esque, have been preserved. Its low naves lend a mag- 
nificent expression of distance, and its series of heights, 
and arclies, and lofty domes a marvellous grace of altitude. 
This religious bauble, that has been supported by royalty, 
has been taken in hand by the government, and with pri- 
vate subscriptions and the proceeds of a lottery, — that is 
maintained specially to defra}^ the pounds yet to be paid, — 
its completion, even to the topmost tower, is pledged within 
three years. 

A walk through the new quarter of Cologne vividly re- 
calls Paris; revealing a classic taste in domestic furniture, 
fashionable costumes, photographs, paintings, and engrav- 
ings, fully equal to the local reputation for arciiitecture 
and music. Long streets stretch away from the Cathedral 
that compare favorabl}', in point of shops, with Chestnut 
Street or Broadway, and the vast galleries making Mal- 
tese and Grecian crosses in the centre of the city, glowing 
in painted glass and florid capital, have cafes and bijou- 
terie establishments that would put the gay metropolis to 
the blush. And in all these magazines tall bottles of the 
original Eau de Cologne of the old Farina firm stare one 
out of countenance. It is a pestilence — a sweet pestilence, 
nevertheless a pestilence — the way strangers are besieged 
by this historic manufacture from all quarters. It is the 
first thing thrust upon a new guest in the hotels ; if he call 
for some personal necessity, from a pitcher of wasli-water 
to a glass of beer. Seltzer, old rye, or Cognac, the Eau de 
Cologne is brought in by the answering kellner^ sind a sale 
is accomplished before the first desire is satisfied. Forever 
after he dreads the sight of the tall bottles that dress the 
shop-windows, or the little, wicker-covered flagons for sale. 
He has been deluded once, and avoids a second betrayal. 
There is much of the pure article to be obtained, but, like 
the superfluity of wines of the famous brand that float 
Germany, more than two-thirds of the deluge is spurious. 

Cologne has, of late 3^ears, become the seat of scientific 
music, and it was a high plume in Gilraore's bonnet that he 
should have secured the applause of the citizen connois- 
seurs when he came over here several years ago. What of 
disappointment I experienced in the melody of Italy has 
been more than compensated by the divine harmonies of 
Germany. Not only is it a city of first-class musical 



392 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

societies and institutions, under the baton of such artists 
as Weher and Dr. Hiller, but the inilitar}^ airs, exquisitely 
rendered by the several bands of the German troops sta- 
tioned here, are heard from reveille to tattoo ; so that witii 
the incessant beat of the drum, toot of the fife, blare of 
the trumpet, and tramp of armed men, there is a surfeit of 
soldiers, and something too much of the whole fanfaronade. 
Nor do I wonder at the apparent indifference of the resi- 
dents to the interminable pageant, when it is supported by 
the taxes and hard tasks of enforced servitude imposed 
upon a reluctant people. 



LETTER LXXIV. 

" A country that draws fifty feet of water, 
In which men live as in the hold of nature ; 
A land that rides at anchor and is moored, 
In which they do not live but go aboard." 

Butler. 

Holland, August, 1878. 

T FELT as T left Cologne for Amsterdam that I was de- 
scending to the seashore, and otlier characteristics could 
not have been more marked tlian the houses, language, 
dress, and currenc}' of the Dutch. I fully realized for the 
first time the widespread difference between German and 
Dutch. The great hills and blue waters of the Rhine are 
lost in the low lands, the canals, the windmills, and the 
squatty red-roofed houses. The language is grotesque and 
])ainfully guttural, and a no nearer relation to the German 
than it is to the Danish or k-wedish. It is not a patois or 
a hybrid of German as is popularl}'- and erroneously sup- 
]>osed, but a cultivated dialect of purely Teutonic origin, 
with none of the ungrammatical features that constitute 
the body of a half-caste tongue. Canals and windmills are 
the objects of the low moorlands, and thongh there are 
many barges to enliven the waters, which are invariably 
covered by a green pestilential scum or stirred into muddy 
pools, the scene was not a pleasant one. It is all Dutch 
and heavy. 

I was passing from the land of wine, but I was entering 
the heaven of painters. Yes! this very nondescript coun- 



OP FOREIGN TRAVEL. 393 

try almost gross and clownisli, has an art all its own. 
With its other idiosyncrasies why should it not have an 
individual genius in its history ? But the art is in pro- 
nounced contrast to the utter unsentimental face of nature 
in the Netherlands. 

It seemed as if I had been transferred to another planet. 
It was all Holland, nothing of Germany was left ; not even 
a memory, a tradition, or a custom. At the first station 
after crossing the Dutch frontier, the clerk in the railway 
office could not recognize a German gold piece; liesitate(l, 
and was obliged to call the entire official staff into council 
before he consented to change it into Holland coin. I had a 
similar adventure in a drug-shop at Amsterdam ; my pur- 
chases made I offered the pharmaceutist a silver mark in pay- 
ment, which he refused to accept for tlie reason that he did 
not know what it was ! He turned it over as curiously in his 
palm as if 1 had brought it from Kamtschatka, and yet it 
was the currency circulating in the adjacent empire, not 
five hours' distant! 

In every old country there are odd spectacles to the vis- 
itor; especially when the visitor is an American woman. 
The peculiarities unnoticed by the opposite sex quickly at- 
tract her attention. She sees and contrasts colors and 
shapes, furniture and decorations, change of food, dresses, 
and municipal mannerisms, that would pass utterly unre- 
corded by her brother, husband, or father. 

Amsterdam, which originated in a fevv fishermen's huts 
on the Zuyder Zee, now the capital of Holland, is full of 
these contrasts. 1 have always heard it compared to Ven- 
ice, but to liken Dutch Amsterdam to the glamour-veiled 
shores of Illyria is gross injustice. It has its labyrinthine 
canals, its multiplied islands, and its numerous bridges; 
but these are all stripped of the romance of their Italian 
protoplast by the Dutch architecture, Dutch women, and 
Dutch habits. 

Still the pictures I took in by the wayside are the pretti- 
est pieces of mosaic I have to store in my memor3% Low 
fresh fields, with a pronounced inclination, sloped far away 
on every side, undivided by an elevation of earth and un- 
marred by a fence; the fair demesne of the prince is parted 
from the little paddock of the peasant by a narrow ditch of 
stagnant water that seems to breathe disease ; on the 
broader channels boats and barges were plying their way 
and flying their gay colors, which aided the crimson roofs 
and long swaying arms of windmills to enliven the land- 



394 PICTURES AND TORTRATTS 

scape ; a raultii)licit3' of cattle grazed in tlie soft summer 
afternoon, many roaming at will or wading in the morass, 
while hundreds were being milked by men or boys; yet, 
when I called for a glass of cream in the hotel they said 
they had none, from which I conceived what an article of 
commerce milk must be. 

Amsterdam I loved to traverse ; in the old and Jewish 
quarters there are establishments and sections resembling 
Chatham Street, New York ; Seven Dials, London, and the 
Kue du Temple, Paris; then in the broader "streets I 
studied the art and literature of the Lowlands. The houses 
are spacious, and closely resemble the homely brick struc- 
tures of Philadelphia, polished and scrubbed with ultra 
care into painful cleanliness. The nurse and baby of an 
f ristocratic family are not a more peculiar sight, and in 
more characteristic uniform, than the housemaid of tlie 
same domicile ; while the abigail is decked in quillings and 
losettes like a circus mare, the infantile appendage lies 
spread out dormant across her arms, the whole enveloped 
in an immense bridal veil ; and the scrub girl or woman, 
or man, whichever I may term those who do the general 
labor of the household, for their dress ages them, and their 
constant and unnecessary work unsexes them to such an 
extent that I could make no estimate of age or gender, — 
this creature is invariably in a short black skirt, and a pur- 
ple chintz sacque fastened about the waist by an apron, and 
white cap. 

Tlie quays are exquisitely paved and shaded by long 
columns of trees, while the boats and ships drift in the un- 
dredged canals ; furnished with female cooks, washers, and 
laborers to push the floating tenements through the slug- 
gish water ; to manage the tiller or the helm ; to load and 
unload, and in every case to mother the multitude of chil- 
dren sprawled over the decks. 

This, with the other Holland towns, are depositories of 
Dutch art ; and, while the Rijks Museum is considered the 
finest collection in the Netherlands, the array in the gallery 
at the Hague seemed to be more choice, though not so 
numerous. They are both truly national galleries, yet the 
Kijks contains many representations of events of national 
history. The two great j)ictures are the monographs, 
so to speak, of ancient political symposiai. First, the 
" Banquet of the Arquebusiers" is more remarkable for 
the total effect produced by its vast size, and the aggre- 
gate of figures clustered with the many other details, than 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 395 

for beauty of outline. It celebrates the peace of Westphalia, 
and the twenty-five convivial diners are life portraits. On 
the opposite wall hangs Rembrandt's " Night-watch," a 
companion to the former. It is superb, as all things are 
that the pencil of that artist ever touched ; a wonderftd 
creation of grouped figures, diversified pigments, and mys- 
tic lights and shadows, which make it a whole gallery of 
art in itself. But the most curious and fantastic work of 
a very old Dutch master represents tlie Madonna in a 
black velvet dress, embroidered in seed pearls, and a blue 
velvet bodice, cut pompadour, while her wealth of shimmer- 
ing crimped hair falls over her shoulders ; the infant Christ 
lies upon her lap; he has a Chinese face; and two little 
boys, curled at her feet like star acrobats, have banged 
hair. To complete this ridiculous illustration one of the 
female members of the holy family sits near with an open 
Bible and a pair of eyeglasses! Now this was the first 
time I had ever seen a traditional fashion-plate of the Vir- 
gin's costumes, and thought the velvet and pearls rather 
inconsistent paraphernalia for an obscure carpenter's con- 
sort. 

But the galleries of the Lowlands, like the dykes and 
sand-hills, that repel the threatened invasions of the sea, 
are numerous interesting old stories, and must be seen to 
be enjoyed. Like the crowding commerce, tlie trade and 
opulence, they are familiar pictures, never omitted by the 
painstaking statistician or the plodding compiler of the 
gazetteer. 

I had been warned of the exorbitant prices of the Hol- 
land hotels, and soon realized the admonition. The water 
is execrable, indeed so offensive as to assert its potent odor 
when transformed into soup. The necessity of imported 
wines makes them equal the prices paid in America for the 
same article. Perhaps this is the chief reason for the 
marked sobriety of the Dutch as a race; while their excuse 
for using intoxicating beverages is sufficient, their safety 
may lie in the fact that they, like us, are obliged to pay 
for their wines in the shape of protective duties. 

It was moonlight ; my window overlooked a swamp, and 
the hordes of mosquitos came in and fed upon me like cor- 
morants, so I determined to leave the pretty Dutch city as 
soon as I had visited the diamond polishing mills of Am- 
sterdam. There are several of these establishments, but 
the one of which I speak is the most important in the 
densely settled Jewish quarter. A tall, vaporous, squalid 



396 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

structure loomed before us ; passing through an equall}' 
impure courtyard filled by the mill employes, — male and 
female, — we ascended lofty flights of steps and passed 
through a succession of workrooms. Tlie polishers im- 
])ressed me more than the process, of which 1 only under- 
stood enough to render my visit interesting, not instructive. 
The machiner}^ of the mills is driven by steam power, and 
tiie rough stone is polished b}^ being pressed against a 
rapidly revolving iron disk dressed with a decoction of oil 
and diamond dust. When the stones are cut or sawn, the 
same mixture is used upon the hair wires, by which means 
they are split. The stone to be split is pressed into the 
top of a small stick covered with wax, and after a little 
nick is made by a fine file, the sharp edge of another 
diamond is pressed into the slight incision, until with 
wonderful accuracy and brilliancy the stone evenly bisects. 

Of the four hundred employed in the establishment fevy 
had good faces. In consideration of the delicacy of their 
work, it was amazing and saddening to note the wild and 
dei)raved air of the girls, ranging from fourteen to twenty. 
Thc}^ had a certain kind of Oriental, dark, unwashed beauty, 
where more of the brutal than the spiritual was developed. 
They evinced uncivilized pride in the tattooed decorations 
on their hands and arms ; and where their brothers dis- 
j)layed one of these jewels ; the}^, with a feminine love of ex- 
travagant embellishment, brocaded themselves with almost 
savage pride. 

These mills are the estate of the Portuguese Jews of 
Antwerp and Amsterdam ; they conduct the entire trade 
in the precious stones which are gathered at the Cape of 
Good Hope, and this must account for the eager avidity 
with which they seek and horde the gems. Amsterdam to 
the Hebrews is a second Jerusalem. 

Rotterdam, the second commercial city of Holland, lies 
one and a half hour below Amsterdam, over the same even 
sandy country, presenting the same features of soil and 
production. With only one-third the population of the 
tbrmer city, it possesses treble its attractions in the life of 
its floating community. The houses are more antique, the 
architecture plainer, and the canals more populous. Most 
of the structures have a downward grade following the 
sinking earth to the sea, and on all the poorer avenues I 
find signs of hot coals and boiling water for sale ; the lower 
classes purchase just enough of these requisites to make 
their tea and cook their potatoes for each repast. But 
there is something inclfably charming to sit in one of the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 39*7 

crumbling brick bow-windows overhanging the canals and 
watch the aquatic life beneath. 

What a medley and what a motlej'' of curious custom 
and customers ; yet this commonwealth is not of to-day 
nor yesterday ; it is the growth of centuries. Families pro- 
create through ages, and never have other homes than the 
cramped low-roofed cabins, nor other fields than brackish 
inlets, nor other woodlands, than the forests of masts. 
Sliortly after dawn this morning I rose to watch the prog- 
ress of the day's domestic life. A family barge lay near; 
the mother first ducked her babies into the grimy, briny 
stream, that seemed to add only soil u re to the bedaubed 
and beslobbered condition of the 3^outhful progeny, then 
proceeded to perform her own ablutions by ducking her 
head over the side of the boat, until I feared in her peril- 
ous condition, not only for her life, but a sad exposee. 
The baker, the milkman, and the market boats came drift- 
ing in the tide, stopping at each of the floating homes at 
anchor, and the habitants of the river crnft negotiated for 
their provisions from the cruising costermongers. One 
little transport has only a man and his canine companion 
for occupants ; at evening he cooks his frugal meal with the 
canal water dipped in a tincup, and his little dog keeps him 
solitary company on deck while he smokes; in the morn- 
inor the faithful animal is first on deck to watch for and 
apprise his master of the approach of the truck vendor. 
In the evening the families of the larger craft cluster on 
deck, and to the music of a well-played accordeon sing the 
religious refrains of the American Jubilee singers, who have 
been passing through these sluggish canals, gathering 
kreuzers for themselves and leaving their own quaint melo- 
dies among these Dutch sea-birds. 

The perfect religious toleration of Holland is refreshing 
in contrast with the bigotry of the greater part of Europe ; 
and while the artist ma}^ regret the fierce Puritan rage that 
swept many beautiful works from the churches of Amster- 
dam and the lesser towns of the Netherlands, there is ample 
compensation in the preservation of the forms and features 
of the victorious Dutch admirals, and the eminent cham- 
pions of religious liberty portraj'cd by the immortal masters 
whose master-pieces have reflected so much honor on the 
Dutch Republic. 

Here again I had a study in these exclusive people, with 
their guttural dialect, their apparent simplicity, and their 
real eccentricities, and a literature and art of their own. 
34 



398 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

The Dutch schools are of immortal renown, the German 
eminent, and the reflection surprising that this small king- 
dom, with an unimi)ortant army, and comparatively small 
navy, controls its increasing commerce, and its vast distant 
possessions with all the quiet stolid determination of real 
Dutchmen. 

Out beyond the treetops of the Boompjes the canal is 
thronged with vessels from ever}'^ sea. Many moored to 
the wharf, and others moving in and out for or from foreign 
stations. Multitudes of the names flying on the pennons of 
these craft indicate their trading witii the Dutch colonies of 
Samarang, Borneo, Sumatra, while their freight of sugar, 
coflfee, spice, and rice strengthen the proclamation of the 
banners. The craft connected with the interior trade is 
largely manned, if I may he permitted the paradox, by wo- 
men ; all populous with vociferous babyhood. 

1 hadly leel that I may trust myself to speak of the 
Dutch seat of government, the Hague, in my present state 
of intense enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the recollection of 
ti»e accounts of the melting heat at home in contrast with 
the delicious atmosphere in this beautiful political capital, 
and perhajjs the vast difference between the former com- 
mercial towns, and this, the aristocratic rendezvous of re- 
finement and culture. Not only the residence of the king, 
the legislative centre, the favorite home of the Dutch nobil- 
ity, and the choice resort of those moneyed princes who have 
accumulated their fortunes by trading with the colonies in 
Jndia, but the seat of art, and, by its nearness to the ocean, 
the spot most sought for by th#se who delight in the pleas- 
uies of the seaside ; thus it lias the double charm of metropo- 
lis and pastoral resort. 

It is a city of broad streets, splendid residences, impos- 
ing squares, fine public buildings, and excessive and uni- 
versal cleanliness. The canals are less numerous, and those 
that adorn the streets are so embellished by white stone 
quays and double colonnades of foliage as to render them a 
cheerful adornment. Home and foreign customs are charm- 
ingly interwoven, so I do not marvel that the rich come here 
to spend their money, the old prefer to close out their lives 
amid its enchanting surroundings and mystic memories, 
the scholar loves to linger in its libraries, galleries, and 
parks, and that the poor seem happier here in the air of 
gentle improvement. For centuries it has been the Court 
city, and though less absorbed in commerce, its great 
artists, the products of its mechanics, the dress of the 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 399 

better classes, and the evident superiority of the men, all 
point to its commanding influence at home and abroad. 

The jsjods of Dutch idolatry in the realm of art are Ru- 
bens, Vandyke, Jordeans, Jan Steen, Rembrandt, Paul 
Potter, and while scarcely daring as a connoisseur to dis- 
cuss their works, I was naturally anxious to see something 
of each in the region in which they lived, and labored, and 
died. Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy," painted two 
hundred and fifty years ago, and purchased by King Wil- 
liam for the museum here, is a weird and wonderful work 
of fore-shortening. Paul Potter's famous " Bull" and 
Vandyke's "Magdalen," and Jan Steen's " Family Grroup," 
are the most impressive works in the gallery. There are 
many pictures vvith all the shaded and mellow gloom of the 
Dutch school, gems in themselves to be studied, but so 
startlingly beautiful and sad is the penitent Magdalen of 
the Flemish artist, in all the magnificence of melancholy 
loveliness, and vvith the dew of contrition lying like vapor- 
ous pearls upon her cheeks, that all others seemed dwarfed 
into insignificance by its omnipotence. Here begins a 
plentitude of Rubens, an introduction to the endless proofs 
of his genius. I mention these artists not to describe 
them or their works so much as to pay a tribute to the 
Flemish schools they represent with such exquisite finish 
and fidelity. 

The good Queen Sophia, being dead, the royal family 
seems to be in bad odor with the people. The King is 
controlled by an elective Parliament, and his renegade son, 
Prince of Orange, riots his fortune away in the foreign 
capitals. The city is aglow with bridal arches and plat- 
forms and wreaths for the coming nuptial festivities of 
Prince Henry and his bride, who it is confidently hoped 
will succeed to the throne. 

The late Queen's "home in the woods" is a healthy con- 
trast to the sad state of royal morals. A mile and a half 
from the city, the Huis ten Bosch lies in a beautiful park 
completely- isolated from other habitations, with the excep- 
tion of a pretty villa on the same estate formerlj'- occupied 
by our own John Lothrop Motley, the best historian of 
the Dutch republic. The ro^al residence was erected by 
the widow of the late Prince William Henry Frederick of 
Holland, in honor of his memory. The park is a laby- 
rinth of shade, drive, wood, foliage, and waterfall; one of 
those mementos which revive the lavish opulence of the 
old Dutch princes and kings. As I came upon the palace 



400 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

I saw only a square, awkward, brick dwelling with a great 
deal of wiiite about it; I was very mucii impressed by the 
severe plainness, but surprise was changed to pleasure as 
I passed into and through the interior, where the diversity 
of apartments and decoration manifested a prodigality of 
taste and expenditure. In all the superb palaces there is 
a harmonious repetition of adornment. It is only tlie 
novelties that impress me. In the dining-room there were 
two mural oil paintings, executed in grisaille by De Witt, 
one hundred and fifty years ago; so in unison were the 
monotones of white and gray blent that they arrested and 
held my admiration with greater strength than the bright 
hues, dramatic attitudes, of more generally acceptal)le 
works. So entirely bizarre in tone, sentiment, and natural 
poise, though drawn and filled in upon canvas, they stood 
in relief, like statuary or stucco, but, unlike marble, seemed 
to breathe in the exquisite swell and motion of their pro- 
portions. 

The piece de renUtaiice of the late Queen's castle is the 
orange salon ; an octagonal hall, adorned on the eight sides 
and cupola with scenes from the life of Prince Henry, exe- 
cuted by artisans of the Rubens school. The effect is fine, 
but the figures are overcrowded, though boldly conceived 
and portrayed. The lofty sides of this salon evince the 
l)resence of careful preservation. But the potent attrac- 
tion to an American is the faithful portrait of the New 
England scholar and historian of the Dutch republic, 
who endeared himself to the Queen and in the hearts of 
the peoi)le by his marvellous annals ot their country. He 
with his family stood in such high favor with the Queen 
that the villa adjoining the royal residence was fixed for 
their home, parted only by a wicker bri<lge, which the 
American litterateur crossed every day to see his Queen; 
a most singular coincidence, in connection, is the fact that 
the amiable Queen and gentle historian, afterwards our 
Minister to Great Britain, died within three days of each 
other. 

The Royal Bazaar at the Hague is a depository of bric- 
a-brac, and nowhere may a better insight be gained of the 
wealth of many of the ancestors of the richer Hollanders. 
Trading as they did and do with the Dutch colonies, and 
dealing with princes and potentates, vast sums were in- 
vested in fantastic art, and gold and silver ornaments, and 
various conceits in furniture. Many of the families still 
hoard the archaic treasures, while others have been forced 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 401 

to part with those collected into the four walls of the Ba- 
zaar. Such mammon princes as the Rothschilds come here 
and pay $10,000 for an ornament of silver, made seven 
hundred years ago, and belonging to the ancient nobility. 
An endless array of old Dutch potter}^, and such relics as 
the prayer-books of Philippe le Bon, and Marie de Medici, 
and Catharine of Aragon; coins, medals, and cameos, old 
and i)riceless, extending far back into the Pagan eras. The 
relics and canonized trophies collected here prove the assi- 
duity with which the vanished ages gathered and valued 
their souvenirs. Passing away from their original owners ' 
they are now for sale to tlie fashionable world, who adorn . 
their mantels and proclaim their centuried lineage by these 
tanorible but false tokens. 

1 [)assed a Sabbath day at Scheveningen, the fashionable 
seaside of Holland. It was a lovely cold day in August, 
and as I rode over the sand dykes to the North Sea the 
populace was flocking out to enjoy the sanitary breath of 
the ocean. A succession of dunes were passed resembling 
the bulwarks upheaved to thwart the invasion of a rebelli- 
ous force. Chain after chain of these earthworks protect 
the cities of the Lowlands from the cruel sea. It is a town 
of great and numerous hotels, expensive shops, and fash- 
ionable cafes, especially in the region of the beach; but as 
I walked up in the precincts of the fishers' cottages I ob- 
served real frugal domesticity, and in the heart of the town 
great comfort and happiness. 

The gray surf of the North Sea came heaving and boil- 
ing over the sands, which, as it receded, it left dry and 
sterile ; a painful sight in remembrance of the verdure 
which keeps our beaclies so fresh and bright. As 1 rode 
over the northern sands the icy breath of Lapland swept 
over the blue and scintillating waters of the far-out ocean. 
'I'he bathers were in their hive-like straw basket or bathino- 
boats and wagons, which were hauled into the surf on 
wheels. Those in the watch-boxes were protected from the 
counter-current of wind, that sweeps Over the Netherlands 
like the mistral of Southern France, getting only the fra- 
grance of the sea and sun. The absence of heat and non- 
existence of insects seemed to render unnecessiary a salt- 
water baptism, and was a chilly spectacle. The great dunes 
impeded the mighty ocean from throwing its avalanche of 
water over the Netherlands. 

As I rode through the shaded avenue to the capital the 
inhabitants of the antique village were out in Sunday rega- 

34* 



402 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

lia, picturesque to the last degree; the granddanie was 
attired as the grandchild of six, — a full short black petti- 
coat, white chemisette and sleeves, a small purple and white 
or blue and white plaid woollen kerchief folded over the 
bosom, and an apron, completed the costume. But the 
headgear is still more grotesque, and is called the 'Miocht- 
dizer." A silver plate fits closely on the back of the head 
and just above the nape of the neck; it is fastened by two 
gilt horns or skewers on either side the face, and over all 
is a lai'ge white muslin cap. 

In fact it was very much like a scene in a play. These 
happy, unpretentious peoi)le, in the stranoeohl-lime dresses, 
as ihey passed in and out the odorous alleys of the magni- 
ficent forest, seemed rather the actors in some prepared 
festival than the simi)le laboring people of the antique 
and unique fishing village. It seemed impossible that in 
the immediate vicinitj' of the brilliant and costly modern 
life of the capital the people should adhere so strictly to 
the customs of their ancestors. 



L E T a^ E R L X X y . 

In Eubensland we find tbe dual fruit work, 

Of master artist, and pupil Vandyke ; 
Both now lie shrouded in glory niuto, 

And both in history are beloved alike. 

Akokymous. 

Antwerp, August, 1878. 

The wa}' from the Hague to Antwerp is througii a rich 
and fruitful country. Notiiing in the topography differs 
from the great expanse of lowland in Holland, except the 
impenetrable forests of Belgium, with here and there little 
white hamlets squatted down upon their borders, and be- 
tween their glades and in their shadows, like a warren of 
rabbits or flocks of quail; hamlets full of the romance of 
an invisible life ; humble communes where the girls stitch 
their lives into fragile laces, to be dragged in the dust by 
the great lady who nothing knows or cares of the sorrow, 
and sadness, and heart-pangs, contained in every sprig and 
wreath of the woof she desecrates at night revels ; villages 
where the youths tend the kine, while the old men are off 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 403 

on the broad seas, and the old women hobble throngh life 
in clatterinii: sabots, eonntinor their beads, and mumblinu: 
Aves in their Flemish tongue, and ignorant, yet unsophis- 
ticated bigotry to the Holy Motiier. They bow their knee 
at the wayside slirine, invoke a pardon, lisp a hallelujah, 
mutter a litany, and pass away as blindl}- confident in the 
omnipotence of the Great Unknown as the Pagans were in 
their Hermes. But these Brabant peasants often leave the 
quiet shade of the gigantic forests, and through vale and 
wood come, in their long-eared caps, silver ornaments, and 
clicking, clashing, clapping, wooden shoes, beating a deviTs 
tattoo over the rough cobbles, to the great cities, to sell a 
bunch of violets, or a shred of lace, at the doors of the ma- 
jestic Cathedral or under the florid portals of the Hotel de 
Yille. They come and sell their bouquets to a stranger, and 
lose the flow^er of their chastity, and the fragrance of their 
innocence in the whirlwind of the cruel, flattering metropo- 
lis ; and then go back in discontent, or remain to sink 
deeper and deeper into the mire, seeking gayer flowers, and 
more ecstatic, wildering aroma among the poisonous airs 
of a false societ}'. 

At the Belgian frontier the customs ofl[icers came to ex- 
amine the baggage of passengers, and a solitary military 
dignitarj^ loomed dark upon the platform, while the yellow 
and green and red lanterns of the brakemen gleamed along 
the meadows, following the line of rail, like fire-flies in the 
sombre gloom. 

We rolled into the only seaport of the flourishing king- 
dom of Belgium on Sunday night, and at my first glimpse 
1 suspected it of the same indecorous revels that greeted 
meat Cologne. At the station I inquired for my hotel; 
the porter said it was about two squares above, and in his 
care I concluded to trust my luggage, and foot the short 
distance. I walked seven or eight long blocks, which 
seemed to be alive with the people from beyond the bas- 
tions, eating and drinking in the cal'^s of this suburban 
section, as 1 discovered it to be, as I continued inquiring 
my way from pillar to post of the Flemish or Walloons 
who understood little French. At last I got into a noble 
street that looked as if there was a possibility of leading 
me to my destination. Great structures of efflorescent 
architecture lined the way, and on either side the foot 
passages colossal lamps, in groups of three glaring pen- 
dants, lighted the avenue that seemed to stretch out in 
interminahle length. Jt was the Place de Meir, adorned by 



404 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

the statues and homes of great artists and rulers ; the Fifth 
Avenue of Antwerp. In an abrupt curve to my left 1 found 
my hotel in the midst of the tradiug quarter, and adjacent 
to the network of narrow, dirty, antique purlieus leading 
to the wharves of the Scheldt. 

Antwerp is a port of vast commerce, mnch wealth, and 
-some social prestige, and while the supremacy' it enjoj'ed 
in the Middle Ages has faded with the years, its art re- 
mains to proclaiui its mediaeval ascendency, and establish 
its conceded influence. It is a fragment of a semicircle 
npon a stream whicli forms its chief advantage; it has few 
or no pavements, old market-places, trading shops of only 
ordinary status; a great middle class, and maiine populace; 
a population that rests with closed offices and shops three 
hours in the middle of the day, and resumes business again 
in the afternoon. Yet it possesses its fine homes, its aris- 
tocracy, its zoological gardens, its parks, and above all its 
art schools, and the choice treasures of its national gods. 

Overwhehningly Catholic, it contains all the sacred gems 
of the Flemish painter Rubens, and his pupil Vandyke, 
whose flower of ripe genius endears it to the hearts of the 
Romish societ}'^ of all countries. Master and protege glori- 
fied the earlier part of the seventeenth century with their 
successive and successful labors. Both tiie favorites of 
princes, the elder pre-eminent for the excellence of his his- 
torical and sacred subjects, the younger for his royal i)or- 
traits, scattered through the courts of the entire Continent. 
Rubens, though a Prussian b}^ nativity, made Antwerp his 
residence and the theatre where he achie'ved his grandest 
glory. I fear many of the stupendous works bearing his 
signatnre, like the oceans of superior wines, are spurious. 
He may have conceived the models, and left them to re- 
ceive flesh and clothing, and coloring and life, from his 
journeymen students, tlius leaving a bad impression of 
some of the work said to be the great artist's. His inspi- 
rations are ever of the most sublime and broadest char- 
acter, though there was often little delicacy or consonance 
of tone. Vivid coloring and brawny contortions — of the 
Michael Angelo school — seem to have been his peculiar 
talent, though his most celebrated disciple, Vandyke, ac- 
quired all the weiKd grace and mellow beauty his patron 
never possessed. In the works of the former there appears 
to be a stream of garish sunlight, that carnalizes tiie most 
})athetic theme; tiiose of the latter have a soft twilight 
glamour that apotheosizes a profligate prince or sensuous 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 405 

duchess. Rubens's principal deficiency seemed to be his 
utter want of discrimination. Like all artists, whether 
painters, authors, or dramatists, he was wont to reward his 
favorites by placing them in the celestial spheres amongst 
the angels, and to punish his enemies by condemning them 
to the hottest flames of Gehenna. But, in that exquisite 
work, — his articulate monument to jealousy, — which he ex- 
ecuted to perpetuate his own hatred and the faithlessness 
of his wife and scholar Vandyke, where he confines them 
in the liquid fire of the Stygian cave, he portrays the fallen 
angel with as much personal beauty as the deified Magda- 
len at the foot of the cross. Rubens's have all the boM 
flourishes and brilliant coloring of a liberal but crude mind ; 
Vandyke shines brightest in his minutiae and dignity of 
portraiture; a difference as widespread as the poles, yet 
they were preceptor and pupil. 

In the Museum we see Rubens at home, as it were. 
Though the Cathedral claims his finest achievements, those 
of the Museum display' greater accuracy of drawing. A 
vast wall of the building is occupied by the whole colony 
of Flemish artists, clustered in a group of fifty-two life-size 
portraits, executed by De Keyser, still alive, and though 
he steadily" refused to insert his ovvn figure upon earnest 
solicitation of the corporation, on the plea that the others 
were sanctified by death, when the composition was finishetl 
and his own was missing, but after loud importunity he 
consented to appear in the extreme background. 

In an adjacent building was the exhibition of what 
seemed a moie tangible proof of Belgian artistic enterprise 
and glory than the remarkable products of the ancient 
magicians. It was a specimen of the way in which the 
corporation of Antvverp encourages young students to 
emulate these immortal examples. In the school attached 
to the academy, and encouiaged by the municipality, the 
poorest Brabant may, for a small sum, prepare himself to 
compete for the prize, which gives the winner the privilege 
of being sent to Rome, at the ex[)ense of the guild, to com- 
plete his education. The fruits of the labors of the six 
present rivals hung before a criticizing throng. The touch- 
ing parable of the "' Prodigal Son" was the subject under 
treatment, and each one had been left to work out his idenl 
alone, and when all were finished, a caucus of eminent 
artists convened and pronounced judgment; and now the 
victorious work hangs in the centre crowned with laurels. 

There is scarcely a city or town of these old countries 



406 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

that docs not own such an institution, and yet with all our 
boasted liberal education in America we have yet to learn 
this great republican lesson. 

Rubens's masterpieces in the Cathedral, the "Descent 
from the Cross," the ^' Elevation of the Cross," and the 
"Assumption" did not overcome nor impress me. There 
may have been something of disappointment in these works 
on account of my own inexperience, and something of too 
lofty ex{)ectations from the burden of adulation showered 
upon them; ort here may have been much in the counter- 
acting radiance of the splendid decorations of the Cathe- 
dral itself, which had just been fully dressed for one of the 
numerous religious festivals, tiiat led me to turn from the 
pictures to the body of the holy art-gal ler}'. 

Here, again, I noted the pageantry of the Catholic Cluirch 
and the influence it wields. It rules the masses with the 
magic power of a caduceus, and whether the etfect be upon 
the heart, the intellect, or the senses, if the result be bene- 
ficial, the cause is good. The majority of Papists go to 
church to enjoy the pictures, the exquisite stained glass 
windows, the bronzes, the banners, and the sweet music, but 
once having entered the sanctum they pray ; no irrepressible 
longing to lay their hearts down before their Maker would 
have guided their steps into the Holy of Holies had it not 
been an art depository as well as the house of God. 

The Cathedral is one of those Gothic fancies so prevalent 
in the church architecture of Catholic Europe. A wilder- 
ness of steeples and towers and flying buttresses. Inside, 
apart from the Rubens pictures and the painted windows, 
the amplitude of delicate and intricate wood carvings seem 
to be the loadstar. The elaborate tracery of the superb 
chapels, naves and chancels, is as marvellous and mystical 
apiece of art as the exterior of the Milan duomo. Religi- 
ous ensigns in the pontifical colors floated from every pillar 
and post, and formed wreathed drapery from the dome; the 
clouds of incense svmbolized a service which keeps itself 
forever before its worshipi)ers. 

The populace were out, like a great sea let loose, to wel- 
come the Archbishop. It was a fine spree for them, but it 
was a decorous, sober, sincere frolic. No sloth, nor intoxi- 
cation, nor profanity characterized the herd that swarmed 
through the lofty aisles of the Cathedral and filled the open 
squares of the cit3\ Every age and station mingled in the 
jubilee, the poorest and the smallest seeming to sympathize 
with the event. The resplendent illumination in the even- 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 40*7 

ing in lienor of the patron saint was the new ecstasy that 
sup[)lemented the glory of the day. 

What the Antwerpians call Mount Calvary deserves no 
better title than the Chamber of Horrors. In the court 
adjacent to St. Paul's a huge mound of rock and slag sur- 
mounted by a crucified Christ represents the sacred hill. 
Hideous prototypes of saints, angels, and ])atriarciis, stand 
at varied heights upon the projections, and surround the 
grotto intended to illustrate the sepulchre at Jerusalem, 
behind wliich a delineation of Purgatory gleamed, where 
the condemned stood neck-deep in flames behind iron bars. 
The entire conception was the fantasy of some ignorant 
bigot, and admirably disposed to make men turn back from 
the Catholic Church, who might have beeen converted by 
the other fascinations and displays, 'i he statues without 
exception were repulsive, and the holy tomb, with all its 
wretched and tawdry painting of purgatory for a back- 
ground, forms a chief object to inspire benighted adherents 
with awe, by a constant presentation of the terrors of eter- 
nal damnation. To intensify the ghastly and misshapen 
sight, several clothes-lines stretched from the tenement- 
houses adjoining, floated all the repulsive rags, just wrung 
from the washtubs, over the heads of the holy conclave. 



LETTER LXXYI. 

"And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, 
Dewey with nature's tear-drops, as they pass, 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves. 
Over the unreturning brave." 

Childe Harold. 

Brussels, August, 1878. 

Not an hour's ride on the rails from Antwerp to the 
little Paris, or hilly city of Brussels, as mountainous as a 
Swiss town hung upon the Alpine crags, and all the way 
is marked by the vagrant detachments of canals, the low 
white lands stretching away from the dunes of the Nether- 
lands, and the tall poplars of France, 

" Whose only boughs 
Are gathered round their dusky brows." 



408 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

There is little in the approach to these Lowland cities to 
stimulate the imagination, and it is only upon entering 
that I realized how it filled out the pictures of my fancy. 
The political capital of Belgium is indeed Paris, l>ut Paris 
epitomized, Paris curtailed of its originality^, and abridged 
of its fertile and varied proportions. 

An exquisite city is Brussels, of art and architecture, of 
vast hotels, of marvellous manufactures, stations, cathe- 
dral, gallery, and |)alace. A mongrel city, so to speak; 
a half-cast, with French, Germans, and Dutch in its line- 
age ; a court centre and an important commercial station ; 
a city where the ducal pageants blend and harmonize 
with the traffic of the Zuyder Zee, the ic}^ Baltic coast, and 
the far Indies; where the crimson and gold pennons, ban- 
ners, and gonfalons floating from palace capitals and 
cathedral posts, seem a part of the national colors flying 
from the lofty masts, and the white sails swaying in the 
breeze of the canals and tributaries that flow away to the 
Scheldt; a city where the lowly peasant or burgher life 
drifting into the streets every morning from the forests of 
Ardennes or the woods of Soignies, or the plains of Water- 
loo, with its handful of violets and daisies, shred of lace, 
or milk-cart drawn by a big yellow dog, is far more inter- 
esting than the shrill-voiced bouffe singers at the Theatre 
de la Monnaie cutting their ambiguous antics, or the 
wealth in ihe Quartier Leopold, or the extravagant shops 
of the rues Koyale, de la Regence, and de la Madelaine. 

]n the early morning the milk or bread wagons, drawn 
by dogs and driven by broad, square, brown Walloon 
women, clattering their sabots and Flemish tongues in 
unison, fill the rugged hill}'^ streets. Two canine brutes 
harnessed to the tongue and one under the miniature cart 
})ull with all their might the burden up the hill, and 
when the mistress halts in the vicinity of her trade, each 
and every dog drops exhausted upon the white roads, but 
with the true instinct of that intellectutd and faithful brute 
springs to his feet at the sound of his particular mistress's 
step. They serve their milk, flap the long tabs of their 
white caps and jingle the silver j)endants in their ears, 
enter the shady, holy recesses of St. Gudule and pray 
to the Great Unknown, in the glow of the Belgian sun 
streaming through the golden and crimson glass of the 
marvellous windows, under the protection of the nim- 
bussed cherubs, and in the seductive clouds of incense that 
reverently veil the angels of the dome, and return to their 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 409 

Brabant groves and brakes to rehearse on the morrow the 
same programme that has been in course of action even 
from their infancv, and will be repeated until the sun of 
life is eclipsed behind the sorrowing shadow of death. 

And these good Brabant people speak the Flemish or 
Walloon dialect, which is as incomprehensible to a French- 
man as it is to an Englishman, while the language of the 
upper classes, of government, the municipal laws and the 
literature, is French, and has been since the days Godfrey 
of Brabant armed himself with the holy cross and led the 
first crusade. There is some slight variation between the 
Walloon and Flemish tongues, — the former spoken b}' the 
northern Belgian, the latter bj' the peasants of the districts 
south of Liejje and Brussels; but neither has a literature 
except in religious publications for the exclusive use of the 
nnder orders. The Walloons are an approach to the Irish, 
Scotch, or Swedes, while the Flemish are akin to the real 
Hollander, and the upper-tendom are French, or French 
mannered and French educated. 

On an abrupt slope below the noble esplanade of the 
Rue Roy ale, where the military tramp and the royal car- 
riages follow in close succession, with outriders and flying 
colors through the long sultry days, there rises a Gothic 
structure, with jutting angles and naves, ascended by vast 
flights of stone steps, and crowned by massive, square, un- 
finished towers, ornate with the florid intricate scrolls of 
the Corinthian chisel. The stained glass windows are the 
cynosure of the interior. They dale from every era of 
time since the thirteenth century, and represent the suc- 
cessive rulers of Belgium in those days of cabal and dis- 
content when the kingdom threw off yoke after yoke of 
foreign oppressors, and passed through a series of regimes, 
choosing its chiefs from among strangers. Tliere are com- 
paratively few sacred subjects portrayed upon these ex- 
quisite windows that arrest the attention of the world ; 
yet this is the cathedral where the women sell figures of 
Christ within the vestibule, and the brown-eyed girl from 
Hougomont or Mont St. Jean barters away her soul on the 
steps without, under the eye of her Holy Mother and in 
the presence of her God. 

One of the chief charms of Brussels is the monumental 
splendors of the streets. In this feature it seems almost 
an envious rival of the white capital of France. Perhaps 
it is because the little kingdom has so much of glory and 
strife and combat to relate in its history, and perhaps be- 
35 



410 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

cause the gallant citizens fancy this way of at once per- 
petuating the fame of their great ones and adorning their 
squares. Is not the equestrian statue of Godfrey de Bouil- 
lon, erected upon the spot where he exhorted the Belgians 
on to war for the Holy Sepulchre, a more fitting tribute to 
the centuried hero than some fantastic allegorical marble 
requiring inscribed explanation ? The Place des Martyrs, 
back of the Rue Neuve, and approached through the Rue St. 
Michel, contains the cenotaph of the brave who fell in the 
autumn of '30. In a sunken gallery, or open tomb, are in- 
closed stone slabs recording the names of the martyrs. The 
figure of enfranchised Belgium surmounts a pediment guard- 
ed by angels of mercy and consolation and prayer, while 
Patria herself chronicles with her stylus the eventful days 
that unlocked her gjves, unbound her pinions, and gave her 
freedom ; the base contains reliefs of a nation's oaths, its 
conflict, its gratitude, and its tombs. The Counts Egmont 
and Hoorne still stand before the Maison du Roi in all the 
stony calmness and majesty they displayed the day, three 
centuries ago, the}^ met their treacherous fate, which really 
was the initial scene of the thirty years' tragedy that ended 
in bursting the Spanish halter. Opening from the Rue 
Royale, and on a vertical line with the celebrated mansion 
where sat " Brunswick's fated chieftain" on the calamitous 
night when a thousand "lamps shone o'er fair women and 
brave men," the Doric column of Congress loses its lofty 
head in the clouds. The fact which the heaven-kissing 
tower commemorates gave to Belgium its king, its liberty 
of press, freedom of education, immunity of associations, 
and latitude in public worship, and Belgium reciprocated 
by giving the cloud-capped memorial to the city. 

But with all these unfading testimonials to the indepen- 
dence, valor, and genius of a country, the grotesque Foun- 
tain of the Mannikin is a greater municipal attraction. It 
is worshipped by the lower Flemish, and sought by stran- 
gers ; it is pointed to b}* valets de place, and attired in 
fitting costume upon j^olitical or religious festivals. The 
Mannikin is a racy little diplomate, who changes his na- 
tional sentiments with the springtide of public opinion, and 
therefore is ever a faithful subject of the enthroned regime, 
and dons a costume in consonance with his precepts. He 
has been a Frenchman, a Brabant, an Orangeman, a Revo- 
lutionist, and is now a loyal adherent of Leopold, of Saxe- 
Coburg. He always courts the ruling power and by his 
sycophant nature remains the favorite of the masses. 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 411 

While Patrifi in her unloosed shackles, looking healthy 
and holy, ma}' some day turn a green and sickly hue, or 
Egmont in his gold lace and feathers may be torn down 
from his pedestal and beaten into the defiling dust of the 
streets by the ungrateful and forgetting posterity of those 
for whom he suffered, and the Colonne du Congres frown 
upon the threatening insurgents below, tlie Mannikin will 
reign in state, for he will be a constituent of the stronger 
faction. 

The city is bathed in a sea of pomp and glee, for it is 
the festal season of the silver wedding of Leopold and his 
Queen Henrietta, and while the steeds from the royal sta- 
bles, gay in gilt trapping and scarlet cloth, and the royal 
guard climb the steep streets, and the silver chimes of 
church towers make sweet melody, and the blare of trumpet 
and beat of drum reverberate through the crowded ways 
and galleries, and silks and laces and diamonds rival each 
other in shimmer and texture and radiance in the palace 
saloons, and orators endeavor to drown each other's voices 
and convictions in the public halls and parks, the peasants 
are trudging their leafy roads, where the shade of poplar 
and pine cast a holy mist around, to the great city to join 
in the pageant to their sovereign, a brilliant ovation where 
I catch glimpses of celebrated characters and meet fre- 
quent revelations of the manners and customs of the labor- 
ing multitude. I watched the parade of the Belgian free- 
schools and the Belgian Parliament, with their chiefs and 
leaders of the realm, as it wound about the broad boule- 
vards that form the town into an ill-shaped triangle, like a 
brilliant-hued serpent, and passing before the royal family 
under the portico of the palace was lost in the roads lead- 
ing away to the suburbs. Detachments from the far-away 
coal districts of Mons and Liege, the lace sections of Ma- 
lines, the northern plains of Ghent and Bruges, and the 
southern sylvan shades of Ardennes came in fantastic 
dress to participate in the jubilee and offer precious gifts in 
homage to their monarch. 

The communal pupils formed a vast army of childhood, 
and though the miijority are Roman Catholic they are all 
instructed from a common fund, the trainins^ beino^ thoi'- 
ough and practical, not religious. The girls flaunted their 
white dresses, long panties, and ga}^ ribbons under the 
scrolled and gilded balconies of the metropolis, perhaps for 
the first and last time in life, and the boys marched like a 
miniature battalion of freedmen, in their gala suits and 



412 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

high hats, as proud of tlioir introduction into their capi- 
tal as an American oirl of her presentation at Victoria's 
court. The future mothers and fathers of tlie kingdom 
chorussed tiieir festive airs in exquisite iiarmony as they 
j)roceeded under the goki and crimson flags from their 
liomes at Antwerp, Liege, Lille, Bruges, Ghent, Malines, 
Brabant, Luxembourg, Hainault, and Namur, cheered by 
the enthusiasm of the rapturous crowds and stimulated by 
the witchery of novelty ; but as the Liberal deputies lately 
elected to the Belgian Parliament appeared they were 
greeted witli a sterner and manlier ebullition of jo}'. And 
these men had vanquished the Ultramontanists at the late 
elections, — despite the overwhelming Catholicism of Bel- 
gium, — and instructed their King to organize a liberal or 
republican ministr^M 

All through the long da\'S throngs of burghers pass to 
and fro in the halls of the Hotel de Ville, where the lace 
train and jewelled coronal to be presented to the Qjieeii by 
her female subjects lay on exhibition, and all through the 
sunlight hours fine music bands march and countermarch 
in the glaring streets, white with the sand from the dunes 
of Holland, — military bands, showing a proficiency in the 
art such as I have heard in no other foreign capital, except 
at German Cologne. 1l et, in the midst of this musical 
supremacy, it was not displeasing to hear that our Gil- 
more's orchestra fairly electrified the cultivated and cen- 
sorious professors of music in the critical city of Brussels 
not long since, and while many unjust critics claim that 
the American leader's organization is composed of Ger- 
mans, such has been the development of scientific music in 
the United States that some of the most valuable contri- 
butions to the operatic stage are native and to the manner 
born. 

The revels and holidays of Catholic countries are un- 
equalled for brilliancy, abandon, and universal i)articipa- 
lion. The inordinate love of dramatic effect, which has 
been fed by the garish show and scenic attributes of their 
church, creates a thirst for all attractions needing Jig ur ante a 
or pulchinello. The illumination in the evening was a 
grand sublimation or deification of the glories of the da3'. 
Great wreaths of mammoth flowers bridged the highways 
from pillar to post; arches of the national colors and vari- 
ous devices of man3'-colored lanteins filled the open places; 
bands and streamers of black and orange and crimson 
hone3'combed the streets, floated from every window and 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 413 

rail of the habitations, and hung in festoons — looped and 
interwoven — over the fagades of public structure and pii- 
vate home. The chalk}^ pavements glare in a hoary re- 
splendence, the atmosphere is a mystic splendor of pris- 
matic hues, and the human herd dip and float in a foam of 
phosphorescence. 

Among the honors extended to the Belgian King and 
Queen, upon the fete of their silver-wedding, the concert in 
the park of the Zoological Garden formed a conspicuous 
feature. A crush of people I met at the gates clamoring 
for entrance; there was a jostling and bustling of rude 
burghers and o[)ulent citizens and under-officers of the 
peace. After some delay and a good deal of discomfort 
we accomplished our entrance within the pale, and, slowly 
taking our place in the ponderously-moving line, began 
the ascent of the jiath toward the radiant fa§ade of the 
restaurant, under which the royal pair were to sit. It was 
a weird, nocturnal combination of illumination and sere- 
nade, with the lights shining in the grass like natural con- 
stellations, and the red-lighted shells looking" down from 
between the tree-branches like great eyes, and yellow lami)s 
shining in arches of glory. The decorations of colored 
fire were superb, but the pyrotechnical display did not sur- 
mount mediocrit)^, at Ifeast to me, for the memory of how I 
had feasted upon the supernal blaze of the Centennial Ex- 
hibition, and the meteoric effulgence of St. Peter's at Rome, 
was a bar to the enjojmient of lesser beacons. 

The depots for the sale of India shawls and the brilliant 
depositories of laces have nothing at the exterior to indi^ 
cate trade but a large brass-plate at one side of the entrance 
bearing the name of the firm, and at times the addition of 
the word dentelles. Both these productions deserve to be 
classed in the category of arts, as they take place with the 
higher sciences of oil-painting, engraving, sculpture, and 
hi^ic-a-hrac. The Netherlands have for centui'ies been in 
direct communication with India, and the wealthy firms 
own their manufactories of Cashmere shawls among the 
dusky nations of the East. A long apartment, like a lady's 
drawing-room, is used for the display, and the walls are 
decorated by prints and paintings of the inhabitants of the 
valleys of Northern Ilindoostan, engaged in the various 
processes of the manufacture of the shavvls; some at the 
looms, and some plying their wooden needles, and others 
steeped in i*ich, warm dye-stuff of the Orient. Do we mar- 
vel at the prices these goods demanded when we learn that 

35* 



414 PICTURES AND PORTRAITS 

it requires the fleece of ten goats and a year's work to pro- 
duce a wrap of onl}- ordinary quality and under size? Yet 
these goods may V)e purchased for a third less price here, 
from the Compngnie des Indes, than at our emporiums. 

My first experience in the lace-shops left me disappointed 
and pei'plexed. They couhi not boast of the correspond- 
ingly and amazingly low figures of the shawls. If there is 
any one thing in which a woman may be said to possess 
instinctive knowledge it is in costume, detail and entire; 
therefore she is ever awake to the inconsistency of over- 
rates. The aristocratic lace and shawl manufactory of 
Brussels is never advertised ; there is ever the all-pervad- 
ing presence of quietude and concealment. I had made my 
purchase of Cashmeres and was consulting with a friend 
how I should carr}' them home without paying duty, — the 
adroit American female never pays impost, it is not in her 
eode, — when the saleslady began to tell off" the cost of her 
laces, like a Catholic counting her beads. What she threw 
before me were of the finest tissue, but all beyond my price. 
The attendant displayed a black thread mantle that ha<l 
been ordered by one of the California money princesses, to 
cost $8000, and the duty at fifty per cent, would add $4000 ; 
but to escape this necessary imposition the garment re- 
mains at the depository until the lady millionaire calls for 
it and carries it home on her fair shoulders, and so cheats 
poor old Uncle Sam out of his rightful tariff. A flounce 
of point d'aiguille, costing two hundred and twenty-five 
dollars a meter, had each spray elevated from the founda- 
tion and the opening leaves of each rose consumed a day 
of the laceworker's time; labor which requires an artist for 
which she receives eighty cents per diem, while the workers 
of less subtile portions receive ten or fifteen cents of our 
mone3'. What I saw was instructive but admonitory, and 
I hurried awtjy from the airy fabrics with the weighty 
price. After many days' search 1 found the envied gossa- 
mer in the Rue des Paroissiens, where the finest textures 
may be procured at rates in moderate contrast to those of 
the Indian importers. 

On a mound of earth adjoining the Zoological Garden I 
sought and found what looked to be an antique ruin. It 
was the home and studio of the erratic artist Wiertz while 
he lived, and is now the casket of his works and a national 
property. I had heard of the fantastic vagaries of this 
gifted man, and felt a natural hunger to feast upon the 
fruits of his weird genius en maf<^f.. The paintings that 



OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. 415 

hfive won the fame of this strange being are the creations 
of a wild, imaginative brain, to which the owner seems 
generally to have allowed nnlimited scope ; — to use an 
Americanism, " let himself loose." He was an expert with 
intervals of insanity; often working with genuine inspira- 
tion, and oftener witli a reckless dash and gross extrava- 
gance ; yet from his portrait, painted at various ages, I saw 
a philosophical face, and far from an}^ evidence of inebriety 
or insanitj^ The pictures in his gallerj^ are all interesting 
and original emanations ; most of the conceptions colossal 
and strongly indicative of developed personifications of 
the mania-a potu. With the vivid coloring of Rubens, the 
distorted and brawny anatomj'- of Michel Angelo, the pro- 
digious conceits of Carlyle, and the fanatic illusions of 
Foe, he was at once fascinating and spectral. It seemed 
very like a lunatic gifted with supreme but momentar}'- 
power, throwing off his dark and brilliant vagaries upon 
canvas. Still there were some of his achievements that 
manifested a soft and touching sentiment, mystical and 
beautiful beyond expression. Many of his women seem to 
have been coined out of the melted love of his heart. The 
portrayed horrors of this man's frenzies are alone worthy 
a trip to Brussels. 

It is strange that the thickly settled kingdom of Bel- 
gium, crowded with great events and numbers of distin- 
guished artists, writers, and statesmen in its annals, w(xuld 
be obliored to take its kinjrs from other countries. The 
father of the present King was Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, 
son-in-law of Louis Philii)pe, of France, and liis wife was a 
princess of the house of Austria; so it may be said that 
neither are Belgians. Despite the disparit}"" of not one 
J*rotestant to every five hundred Catholics, the Extremists 
were conquered by a large majority at the last election by 
the Liberals. The Queen is a Protestant, and her royal 
spouse is a moderate Catholic, quiet and domestic in his 
customs, while Henrietta is fond of the turf, horseflesh, 
sawdust, spangles, rush lights, and legs, which is equalized 
by her philanthropy, and though a grandmother, still 
drives four-in-hand and frequents the American circus. 

* Hi :^i ilfi :{c ^ 

" The play is done, the curtain drops, 
Slow falling to the prompter's bell ; 
A moment yet the actor s'ops, 

And looks around to say — Farewell." 



INDEX. 



African slave trade, 15 

A f'terglow of Bernese Oberland, 332 

Alcester, 62 

Alhambra, 83 

AUumiiiation, May 1, 1878, 146 

Altorf, 349 

Amsterdam, 394 

Antwerp, 402 

Aquarium, London, 115 

Arabs of London, 36 

Arc de I'Etoile, 182 

"Ariadne on the Pantlier," 376 

Avenue de 1' Opera, 189 

Avignon, 218 

Beau Sejour, Zurich, 356 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 46 

Beneficent organization, 35 

Benevolence of a proprietress, 58 

Beroy, 211 

Berne, 325 

Bernhardt, 191, 3 94 

Bilton Hall, 21 

Birmingham, 52, 56 

Black Forest, 363 

Boboli Grardens, 292 

Bois du Boulogne, 183 

Bond Street jewelry shops, 29 

Bonivard, 324 

Boompjes, 398 

Borbonica, Museum, 290 

Boulevards, 139 

Brienz, 337 

British Museum, 124 

British patriotism, 84 

British pauperism, 37 

Brunig Pass, 344 

Brussels, 407 

Bull, John, taciturn, 20 

Bull, Mrs. and her heifers, 27 

BuUier, Jardin, 157 

Burgundy vineyards, 211 



Cahinet parliculier, 198 

Cadenabbia, Lake Coiuo, 306 

Cafe Royal, 23 

Calais, 135 

Campo Santo, 243, 245 

Cannes, 229 

Casino, 237 

Catalans, 224 

Catholicism in Switzerland, 349 

Cave canem, 283 

Chaillot Heights, '204 

Champs Elysees, 181 

Champs de Mars, 142. 200 

Channel, crossing the, 134 

Charlecote, 62 

Chester, 52 

" Chester Cup," 55 

Chiffonnier, 147 

"Christ leaving Prsetoriura," 33 

Chr stoforo Col umbo, 241 

Cimarosa, 81 

"City of Richmond," 13 

Claqueurs, 193 

Coblentz, 385 

Coifi'ure, English, past and pres- 
ent, 28 

Cologne, the city, 388 

Constance, Lake, 360 

Coppet,313 

Corniche, 226 

Costumes and Customs, English, 
26 

Cote (Tor, 212 

Covent Garden, London, 78 

Coventry, 74 

Crewe, 21 

Criterion, bar, 24 

Criterion Theatre, 89 

Crystal Palace, 112 

Cyprian goddesses, 234 

Demon, Ram^ the, 35 

(4n) 



418 



INDEX 



Dijon, 213 
Diomed Inn, 281 
Docks at Liverpool, 17 
Docks at Marseilles, 224 
Dore Galh'rj, 33 
Dream of Chillon, 316 

Eaton Hall, 53 
Ehrenbreitstein, 386 
Eniannletta. 294 
English churchmen, salaries of 

some, 46 
English Literati, 105 
English women, 27 
Estates at Liverpool, 17 
Ethelfleda, 70 
Euston Square Station, 21 
Euthanasia, 282 
Evan's, 85 
Exposition Universelle, a day at, 

143, 205 
P'xtract of Alderney, 63 

Farrar, Canon, 46 

Faubourg St. Antoine, 152 

Ferney, 314 

Figures of British pauperism, 37 

Flaneurs, 139 

Florence, 287 

Fiuelen, 350 

Fog, London, 30 

Foiwood, reception of Mr. and 

Mrs., 16 
Foundling Hospital, 46 
Frankfort-on-Main, 374 
French charities, 199 

caricatures, 151 

flats, 138 

labor, 148 

milliners, 150 

restaurants, 197 

shops, 198 
Frogmore, 119 

Geneva, 308 

Genoa, 240 

Giessbach, 340 

Gluck, 81 

Godiva, 75 

Goethe, 375 

Gold, power of, 91 

Greek Chapel, 380 

Grisette, 155 

Grosvenor, Marquis of, 53 



Guidecca, 207 
Guttenberg, 375 
Guy's Cliff, 71 

Hague, 398 

Handel, harpsichord of, 41 

Hansom, 15 

Hastings, 108 

Hathaway, Anne, 62 

Heidelberg, 373 

Herald's College, London, 48 

Holland, 392 

Home of Frenchmen, 195 

Hotel des Invalides, 167 

Hotel, London and Northwestern 

at Liverpool, 15 
House of Commons, 129 
Huis ten Bosch, 399 
Human intellect in Republican 

France 209 
Hyde Park, 120 
Hyeres, 228 

India House, 205 
Interlakt^n, 333 
Irving, Henry, 87 

Jubilee Singers, 330 
Judic, Madame, 193 
Jungfrau, 337 

Kaisersalle, 376 
Kaltbad, 35- 
Kenilworth, 73 
Kulm, 353 

Lake dwellings, 358 

La Scala, 304 

"Last Snpper," 305 

Latin Quarter, 152 

Lausanne, 326 

Leamington, 73 

Leicester Square, 82 

Liberie, Eyulite et Fraternite', 146 

Lion of Luzerne, 348 

Liverpool, 13 

«' Locked in and left,'' 20 

London, 18 

London, a walk through, 96 

Lotteries of Marseilles, 221 

Louvre, 173 

Lully, 81 

Lutetia, 152 

Luther, 375 



INDEX. 



419 



Luther, finp:er ore:an of Martin, 41 
Lnxembonrg, 156, 176 
Luzerne, 340 
Lyceuna Theatre, 87 
Lyons, croix-Rousse, 210 

Mabille, Jardin, 159 

Madame Michel, 151 

Mannikin, 410 

Marche du Temple, 154 

Marine Aquarium, 112 

Marseilles, 217 

Marshall and Snellcrove, 29 

Mausolea of Titiau and Canova, 

301 
Mendicants, scarred and scarified, 

37 
Mersey, 17 
Milan, 302 
Monaco, 231 
Mont Cenis, 310 
Mont-du-PieU, 1 54 
Mont Pilat, 218 
Monte Carlo, 231 
Monte Pincio, 248 
Motley, John Lotlirop, 399 
Mount Vesuvius, 278 

Netherlands, religion of the, 397 

ISew Place, 58 

Nice, 227 

Notre Dame Cathedral, 156 

Notre Dame de la Garde, 222 

Notre Dame de Lorette, 140 

Nouvel Opera, 189 

Oak Lodge, 89 
Opera, London, 79 
Oxford Music Hall, 86 

Paesiello, 81 

Palace of the Doges, 299 

Palais Royale, 141 

Palestrina, 81 

Paris, 132 

Parliament Palaces, 128 

Pauperism, English, 37 

Pere la Chaise, 169 

Peter Robinson, 29 

Petrarch and Laura, 218 

Phillips, J. 0. Haliiwell, 60 

Piccini, 81 

Pigeons of St. Mark, 300 

Pitti Palace, 289 

Pompeii, 279 



Pont de Jena, 203 

Ponte Vecchio, 291 

Prince of Wales, pavilion, 202 

Qua! d'Orsay, 203 

Rajah Holapore, 292 

Regent's Park, 121 

Rest Roubion, 226 

Restaurants, London, 91 

Rhine Falls, 359 

Riiine, from Biebrich to Cologne, 

381 
Riallo, 297 
Rienzi, 219 
Rigi, 350 
Rome, 246 

Rothschilds, home of, 375 
Rotterdam, 396 
Roulette, 238 
Rue de la Roquette, 169 
Rugby, 21 

Salve, 283 

Santa Croce, 289 

Schaffhausen, 360 

Scheveniugen, 40l 

Seagulls, 13 

Sefton Park, 17 

Servant-girlism, 186 

Shakespeare House, 57 

Shakespeare's birthplace, 60 

Shottery, 62 

Silk factories of Lyons, 215 

Slave trade, 16 

Soap factories, 17 

South Kensington Museum, 38 

Staflfel, 352 

Stanley, Dean, 43 

Station bars and booking offices, 

18, 19 
Stoke Poges, 119 
Stolzenfeis, 385 
Stratford-on-Avon, 57 
Strasburg, 3 9 
St. George's Hall, 14 
St. James Park, 121 
St. James's Hall, 86 
St. Leonards-on-Sea, 110 
St. Lorenzo, 289 
St. Marco, piazza and cathedral, 

298, 299 
St. Peter's Cathedral, 252 
Sydenham Hill, 112 



420 



INDEX. 



Tapestry of Baypiix, 110 

Tell's Chapel, *349 

Thames, its course throiigh Rich- 
mond, Kew, Hampton Court, 
etc, 100 

Theatres, London 90 

Theatres, Paris, lb9 

Thun, 334 

I'oulon, 228 

Tower Hill, 96 

Travelline carriages. Ens^lish, 19 

Trinity Chapel, Stratfoid-on-Avon, 
59 

Trocadpro, 200 

Turin, 309 

Tussaud, Madame, gallery and 
career, 31 

Underground railway, 30 

Valley of Marne, 212 
Venice, 293 
Versailles, 178 



Vesuvian Bay, 277 

Vevay, 320 

Villa Borghese, 240 

Virtue and Vice, in London, 34 

Vitznau, 350 

Wales, poor of, 37 

Walloons, 403 

Warwick, 61, 64, 65 

Wealth and poverty of London, 34 

Weisbaden, 377 

Westminster Abbey, 24, 25 

Westminster Hall, 131 

Westminster, Marquis of, 53 

Westminster Palace Hotel, 22 

Wiertz Gallery, 414 

Windsor, — town and castle, 116, 

117, 118, 119, 120 
Wood sculptures, 339 

Zug, Lake, 353 
Zurich, 354 



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